


Like Fireworks

by purplehedgehogskies



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gay Keith (Voltron), I saw The Space Between Us and immediately thought it would make a good Klance AU, Keith lives on Mars and Lance lives in Arizona, Light Angst, M/M, Mutual!! Pining!!!, Outer space/space travel, Pining Keith (Voltron), Pining Lance (Voltron), The basic concept is the same but the events are going to be pretty different PLUS it's super gay, The plot is very loosely based on the movie, klance, minor character death in the first chapter, touch-starved Keith!!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2018-10-09 05:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10404732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplehedgehogskies/pseuds/purplehedgehogskies
Summary: When an unplanned pregnancy presents a hiccup in the first mission to Mars, the Altea Company keeps it under wraps. When Elle Kogane dies in childbirth, her true cause of death remains confidential and her child is raised in secret on Mars.At seventeen, Keith's caretakers have begun to notice that this isolation isn't good for him, and the Altea Company makes efforts to bring Keith back to Earth. What they don't anticipate, however, is how much he wants to stay. Keith wants to be known, to know where he came from and to know where he belongs, and he can't find that where he is.Aided by a small teenager and a robot, Keith escapes and runs to the only thing he knows on Earth: a boy in Arizona who makes the universe seem less lonely.





	1. Prologue/This Is the Future

Everything about this night sparkled. The bubbling champagne in crystal flutes, the soft, sweet notes played by the orchestra on one end of the banquet hall, the glimmering chandelier. Elle Kogane’s laughter from several yards away, where she leaned over between two benefactors and joked about her impending trip, musing aloud about whether she’d packed enough.

The crackling of speakers overhead brought the voices that filled the hall into hushed whispers. The lights dimmed and roving spotlights drifted towards the stage, over which hung projection screen that was suddenly alive with color. Blurred camera footage of a sprawling green backyard, shaking as the parent who filmed followed the children—three small boys and a wild-haired girl, clutching plastic rockets and sporting grins that blinded.

This was the introduction to the Altea project: it had all started in the Edwards’ backyard, where four children dreamed of landing on mars.

The grainy film faded into a shot of Alfor Edwards, leading the viewer through workrooms and laboratories, explaining the mission in dazzling terms meant to catch their attention. Footage of the team in training filled the screen next, and Shirogane cast his eyes towards Elle again as she watched herself floating through the anti-grav simulator, her hair as dark and untamed as ever.

Everything about this night sparkled—tonight, they celebrated the success of the project that they’d always dreamed of, of the future it promised for their planet and their families. The screen now showed Alfor’s young daughter and Shirogane’s boy sitting at opposite sides of a table covered in paper and crayons, the girl talking brightly and holding up a picture of houses on the rusty red surface of Mars. With that, the film drew to a close, coming full circle.

Shirogane had a speech prepared. He was not sure why it had to be him and not Alfor, the charismatic one. Or Coran, the one who always made his audience laugh. Or Elle, who was bright and beautiful and mesmerizing to crowds. But it was him.

When he stepped onto stage, standing behind the podium, Shirogane’s gaze swept over the gleaming banquet hall. He found her face one last time and she smiled at him, and oh, how he wished he had learned to fly so he could stay with her, instead of watching her launch into space while he stayed on the ground.

“This is the future,” he began.

 ****

“This is a disaster.”

The gray sonogram image that moved onscreen was formless and undefined—it represented some kind of shame, to them. A wrinkle in their plans that should have been smooth-going, a bump in the road, a wrench thrown in.

To Shirogane, it meant one million things and nothing at all. But it certainly wasn’t a disaster.

“How far along?” he inquired, looking up from where his hand tapped anxious rhythms against the table. Through the window into the adjacent room, his son played with a large robot toy that he crashed into Allura’s elaborate tower of blocks. The way the little girl’s eyes welled up seemed more of a disaster, more immediate and demanding, than the matter at hand.

“Approaching the second trimester. The estimated due date is about a month after arrival,” Coran said, looking between Alfor and Shirogane. “It will be the first child born on Mars.”

“It’s unethical,” said Alfor.   
“What else can we do? Have them turn around?” Shirogane asked. He was still watching the children in the next room—Takashi had begun to rebuild Allura’s tower, and she was drying her eyes and talking to him as he did so. He wished he could be there instead, listening to them easily solve their problems of youth instead of dealing with this. “Not after everything we’ve done to get here.”

“Elle was irresponsible enough to…”

“Elle Kogane is the brightest woman I’ve ever known,” Shirogane interrupted. He rose to his feet and leaned heavily on the table, his eyes now locked on Alfor. “She was responsible, it just must have _failed_.”

“He’s right. There’s a record of her contraceptive use in the medical files,” interjected Coran. “Without Elle, we wouldn’t have made it this far. Shaming her won’t accomplish anything.”

“There’s nothing we can do,” Shirogane insisted. “All we can do is learn from this.”

Alfor sighed and switched off the monitor. Wordlessly, and by way of answer, he ended the meeting and left the room. The other members of the board filed out—he’d almost forgotten they were there—as Shirogane went to the window overlooking the children’s playroom. He remembered all the days he’d watched his son through this window as the pieces of the Altea project fell together, everything that mattered in his life flourishing.

This was not a failure, or a disaster. It was merely an inconvenience that could be easily sidelined for now.  They would reconvene when the baby was born. Shirogane felt resignation settle over him; there was nothing he could do about it until then.

In the meantime, the children played, building a world in a tiny room. A world where anything was possible.

 ****

He watched her die.

He had grown up with Elle, watched her throw herself into her studies, into her dreams. She had always been pure energy and impulse, a whirlwind that swept him along with her. When her time on Mars was over, she was meant to return to Earth with that spark of life still in her, ready for the next frontier.

She was not supposed to die like this, on a table under bright blue lights, having barely whispered her newborn son’s name before gasping out her last breaths. She was not supposed to die onscreen while Shirogane watched helplessly from the darkness of his living room. At least Takashi was with his mother this weekend, at least he did not have to see his father fall apart.

At the end of it all, when there was no longer hope to restart her heart, and when the deep ache had already settled deep into his bones, Shirogane pulled up the feed from the other camera.

The baby wasn’t crying anymore—he blinked curiously at the team that gathered around him, his hands curling around fingers, his body still red and flushed from birth. Big, blue eyes. A shock of thick dark hair that was sticking up on one side, already so reminiscent of Elle’s ever-untamed locks.

_Keith_. She’d named him Keith.

He was the first human born on Mars, and his mother was the first human to die there.


	2. The Martian King

Through the open door of his sleeping quarters, Keith could hear RRED’s clacking tire-treads as she maneuvered through the corridor—presumably to the next job she’d been programmed to do for the day.

“RRED?” he called, poking his head out into the hall. “Can you help me with something?”

The Roving Restoration and Education ‘Droid paused, processing Keith’s voice. She tilted her head when she figured out it was him, rolling back towards his room.

“What can I help you with, _Martian-King_?”

Keith laughed at the nickname he’d programmed into the bot, backing up into his room and taking his place in the hard, plastic desk chair. He rolled it up to his computer monitor as RRED made her way through the narrow space of his doorway, looking over at her. She’d been built with multiple purposes in mind—to keep Keith company and teach him things had been one of them, so her programming required her to respond when he asked for her. 

"Help me get into the storage facility,” said Keith. “I really don’t care how, but there’s something I need in there.”

“Why?”

“Ugh, don’t ask questions. You’re a robot—act like one.”

“I am programmed to be your companion,” RRED insisted, her voice stilted and mechanical, devoid of the feeling an actual companion would express. “It is unfriendly of you to treat me this way.”

“We’re not really friends,” said Keith. He scrambled through the light clutter on his desk to find his multitool, pointing it in her direction. “Now, how do I get to the storage room?”

“That information is classified.”

“Okay, listen. All I need is a map through the vents, or the codes, or _something_. Don’t make me do something I don’t want to do,” Keith said, rolling closer to the android. RRED rolled backwards towards the door. 

“I’m sorry. That is classified.”

He knew she wasn’t sorry. She wasn’t even real.

Keith launched out of the chair and intercepted the robot just as she reached the doorway, slamming his hand on the door controls and sealing them both inside the room. Still trying to wheel away from him, RRED advanced into the room and collided with the edge of his bed—she was unused to navigating such a small area, and wasn’t programmed to see obstacles below her eye level.

Plus, she was pretty useless as soon as Keith’s multitool was shoved into the junction between what was sort-of her head and sort-of her neck, prying at the wires that connected them. He’d just need to find the information port to plug into his desktop, perhaps dig around a little for blueprints, and he’d have what he needed. This way wasn’t hard, but it would’ve been so much easier if she’d just been cooperative and sent the information to his computer wirelessly.

After weak protests with a distorted voice and garbled, nonsensical words, RRED was silent and headless in the center of Keith’s bedroom. He’d reattach her, eventually, perhaps when the crew noticed she was missing—in the meantime, he had one less babysitter.

Uploading the map of the vents took more time than anticipated, so Keith pulled up the Earth web browser he’d managed to download and logged into his favorite chatroom. When he’d first figured out he could talk to people on Earth, Keith had explored all kinds of websites before finding Club Voltron, which served as a social network and gaming platform of sorts, with all kinds of minigames to play and things to talk about. The site had so many facets that even after using it for a year, Keith still hadn’t seen everything it had to offer.

As soon as Keith’s profile was open on his screen, he checked to see who was online. He’d met all kinds of people, but he had favorites—there were stars next to their pictures on his screen, because he talked to them so often.

Not just often, really. Keith talked to Lance almost every day.

Lance went by _BlueSharpshooter_ on the website, but a few months ago through their private messaging, Keith had finally learned his real name. First, Lance had asked his, and he’d given it up without hesitation. Keith wasn’t sure why he’d been so eager, but he thought maybe it was because no one on Earth without the proper clearance knew who he was, and Keith wanted to be known.

Since then, they’d started video chatting when they could. It was difficult, with the choppy connection and lagging feed, and Lance’s mouth onscreen could never catch up to his words, but Keith liked to see him. So, to work around the dreadful lag, they messaged each other while their faces were displayed on screen—it wasn’t a workout for his vocal cords, but he got to see Lance’s face break out in his brilliant grin and hear the notes of his laugh when Keith managed to say something particularly funny. It was a good arrangement, he thought.

Lance wasn’t online, so Keith played the sites version of Solitaire in the meantime, with different colored lions on the cards instead of the usual suits. It was about the time Lance got off of school, so Keith figured he was on his way home and would be able to connect when he arrived. It was a Friday, so Lance wouldn’t be so consumed with homework that he couldn’t do more than just text.

Keith just had to wait a little while. Keith was not a patient person, and was about to type out a whiny “hurry up and get home I’m bored” when Lance’s profile picture—it was a cat with a blue mustache taped to its face—jumped from the OFFLINE list to ONLINE.

 **BlueSharpshooter:** Heyyyyy B)

 **Martian-King:** Hi

 **BlueSharpshooter:** Video me?

Keith immediately clicked on the video chat icon, watching as it loaded. It usually took a while to connect, so he glanced over to his adjacent monitor to check RRED’s uploading progress. Almost there. Thinking of RRED reminded him to shove her headless body out of the camera’s view, towards his closet where he’d stash her until he could find the motivation to reattach her head.

When Lance’s face appeared on screen, the collar of his school uniform shirt unbuttoned and his orange tie already loosened around his neck, he was fuzzy around the edges and pixelated when he moved too fast. Something about seeing him still made Keith’s chest feel too small, but in a good way.

 **BlueSharpshooter:** So school was horrendous today and I’m never going back

 **Martian-King:** What happened?

Lance grimaced onscreen, and flexed his hands, ready to type up a long message.

 **BlueSharpshooter:** Where to begin!!?? My wonderful amazing angel Hunk was not there! He got a stomach flu, my poor son. And Nyma ditched me at lunch to sit with her greaser boyfriend, so I was all alone in the corner, it was so sad. To top it all off I fucked up my chem lab and the teacher was pissy and wouldn’t help me and my lab partner threw a fit. Like. I’m just a small boy trying to live my life! Leave me alone!!

 **Martian-King:** So you want to be left alone??

 **Martian-King:** I’m kidding

The way Lance’s face drooped when he saw the first message and wrinkled up when he realized he was being teased made Keith laugh.

 **BlueSharpshooter:** this is no joking matter Keith I’m dropping out of high school I’ll be a failure and disappointment to everyone I know

 **Martian-King:** You’re not dropping out. You’re a senior, you’re almost done anyway???

 **BlueSharpshooter:** A senior with no plan. I almost envy you, you CAN’T go to college so no one expects you to, but little old me? I pretty much HAVE TO

 **Martian-King:** You don’t wish you were me.

He watched Lance read the message, and then heard a heavy exhale.

 **BlueSharpshooter:** I know I know. Fragile bones, allergic to everything, overprotective parents.

Keith huffed, “Not to mention being stuck where I am. _Forever_.”

A pause, the connection catching up to Keith’s words, to Lance’s reaction. Then, softly, “I know. That life sucks…”

This was what he had told Lance, and everyone else he’d talked to on the web. He had claimed he had a medical condition called osteogenesis imperfecta, that his allergies were intense and prevented him from functioning outside his apartment, that he couldn’t leave without getting hurt. Parts of it were true—his bones would be fragile on Earth, just like he’d said. And the part about not leaving was true, also; he’d been asking about going to Earth since he was ten, when they’d first let him use communications between their settlement and the Altea Company’s base of operations back on Earth. Since he’d realized East Texas was called that because it was named after a place on Earth, a place that Keith would never see full of people he’d never meet. Since he’d first spoken to Takashi Shirogane—Shiro—who told him about Earth and about his mother and about all the things he was missing. Shiro, who had also been the one to break it to Keith that he could never come to Earth, that he probably wouldn’t even survive the trip.

His mother was the reason he’d beheaded RRED, his fascination with Earth was the reason he’d broken through the East Texas system to get onto Earth’s worldwide web. Lance was something else.

Lance was worthy of the truth, Keith thought, but he’d never believe it. So Keith would never tell him.

 **Martian-King:** Did you know I’ve only ever met 14 people in person?

 **BlueSharpshooter:** No

 **BlueSharpshooter:** Isn’t that lonely?

 **Martian-King:** It is.

“I make it better, don’t I?” Lance’s voice was clearer than usual, the connection strong for once as he gazed steadily into the camera. “At least a little?”

“Yeah,” Keith said. “You make it better.”


	3. Honk If You Love Space

Keith didn’t mind small spaces. He’d grown up in tiny sleeping quarters made to be the utilitarian lodging of astronauts, not a kid that stretched like a weed between the ages of fifteen and sixteen, who liked to kick things or take them apart depending on the mood he was in. It was funny, really. East Texas was not built for Keith, and Keith was not really built for East Texas.

It wasn’t really the small spaces that got to him, though. Now, lying on his stomach with metal on all sides of him, Keith’s main discomfort was the way his flashlight was digging into his side.

“Oh. Oh no,” said Keith, staring down at the vent he’d stopped at. This was the right one—he’d gone over his map enough to know. The problem now was that the way to remove the grate was on the outside, not the inside. His multitool clanged against the metal of the vent as he dropped it in frustration.

He contemplated the situation for a moment, grumbling angrily to himself before deciding his tendency towards brute force would actually be helpful today. Snatching up his multitool again, Keith crawled further down the vent until his legs were poised over the grate, then wiggled and around and rolled over onto his back.

Bowing his legs, Keith raised them just a little before slamming his heavy boots into the grate. It gave a little, but not completely, so Keith kicked again and felt it fall. It clattered to the floor of the storage room, a loud metallic clanging that sounded to Keith like success. He followed shortly after it, dropping into the room and dangling by his hands for a moment, before dropping gently down.

Keith swept his flashlight beam around the room, finding that it was long and narrow, lined with stacked metal cabinets. It looked unsettlingly like the morgues Keith saw on television shows from Earth. Behind him, the room was all towering stacks of crates, and near the row of cabinet doors a small stepladder that Keith noted would be useful when he climbed back up into the vents.

Now all he had to do was figure out which storage locker he was looking for. Unfortunately, the answer to that question had not been in the blueprint files that Keith had taken from RRED.

It took Keith a few minutes to find the plaque that bore his mother’s name, on a locker that was plastered with faded and peeling stickers. He wondered if she’d put them there, when she’d arrived, thinking she’d still be there to appreciate them after Keith was born. He wondered if she’d known she might not live, and so she left as much of herself on this locker door as possible so he might someday find it.  Some of them told him who’d she’d been rooting for in elections long past, others seemed to be from places she’d been—a lodge in Colorado, a pizza place in New York, something called the Castle of Lions, the sticker still shimmering under the light of his flashlight.  A long sticker stretched across the corner at an angle reading _Honk If You Love Space_ on a background of star patterns.

 She must have loved space. He wondered if maybe, maybe, if he’d known her, he’d love it more. Instead, the space between himself and earth was an obstacle, the amazing triumphs of science that surrounded him were the walls of a prison.

The keypad panel was dusty and unused. For a moment, Keith brandished his multitool, ready to pry it off and hack his way into the locker, but he stopped. Part of him ached at the thought of damaging it, of disrupting this piece of his mother that had been preserved for so many years. For once he did not want to break something that was in his way, but instead of being proud of his impulse control Keith could only ache for the mother he’d never had, who he’d only seen in old pictures that Coran had and a video Shiro had sent him, of his mother playing with a smaller, younger, unscarred version of Shiro himself.

Cautiously, Keith typed a series of letters into the keypad and watched the small light above it glow green. He’d thought it was a long shot, that there’d been no guarantee she would’ve used that as the code, but she had.

He opened the locker door, finding a plastic vacuum-seal bag full of folded clothes beside a box covered in more stickers—he recognized one of them from a t-shirt that Lance wore, a spider surrounded by webs on a red and blue background, but he didn’t know what it was reference to. Carefully, he withdrew the box, finding that it was almost too big to take back up into the vents with him. Keith lifted the lid and peered inside, finding a few books and old comics, on top of the comics were a few letters from someone named Ken, predating the Mars mission, a picture of Shiro with a missing-tooth smile and There was something else, too—a disc in a plastic case labeled with the names _Ken & Elle_ and a date just months before she’d left Earth.

 Distantly, someone laughed. He thought for a moment it was her, a memory of her laugh from the footage that Shiro had sent, or some implicit memory from when he lived inside her and could hear her voice all the time. He’d read that somewhere—that children knew their mother’s voice because they could hear from the womb. But no, this was too high, not rich enough to be a vivid memory of his mother—no, that was Deena, approaching the storage room while talking to one of the other scientists.

Keith scrambled to replace his mother’s belongings and closed the box, nudging her locker closed with his shoulder as he stood up. Still balancing the box in his arms, Keith kicked the stepladder over to the vent opening and climbed up, putting the box into the vent before grabbing onto the edge and pulling himself up. As Keith hauled his body into the ductwork, he landed partially on his mother’s box, squashing the cardboard and cursing softly as heard Deena just outside the door, talking about her approaching trip back to Earth and how Slav would be coming back to take her place.

Slav, who was currently at Altea’s base of operations driving Shiro up a wall. Keith tried not to snicker at the thought of it, pushing the box further down the vent as he wiggled the rest of the way through the opening, narrowly avoiding being seen. If he had been just a second slower, Deena would’ve opened the door to the storage room to find Keith’s legs dangling down from the vents.

Keith booked it through the vent system, pushing the box ahead of him as he squirmed and crawled as quickly as he could. It was all very undignified, he thought, and he was glad no one was really witnessing it.

Keith was lucky the vent in his room was right over his bed, embedded into the wall instead of the ceiling. It had been easy to climb into and easy to drop back out of, falling in a heap onto his pillows, the box having landed towards the foot of the bed when he tossed it out.

He had almost caught his breath and begun soaking in victory when someone cleared their throat. Keith’s head whipped to the side, his gaze falling on Coran’s fluffy orange moustache before scaling back too look at the rest of him, reclined in Keith’s desk chair with a tablet in his hands. Wordlessly, he tossed it towards Keith.

The tablet was playing security camera footage of the storage room, and Keith watched as the vent covering dropped to the floor, followed shortly by a teenage boy who dangled awkwardly before landing. Keith found some peace of mind in the fact that he actually looked cool, but then the image of him stumbled a little in the dark because he’d forgotten about his flashlight.

Fuck.

“Even if we hadn’t seen you on camera, you left evidence in your wake,” said Coran. Keith dropped the tablet onto his bed with a groan, closing his eyes and pressing his face into a pillow. “The vent covering on the floor, stepladder in the middle of the room under the vent, and, oh, the open locker belonging to Elle Kogane, who’s been dead for seventeen years.”

“I thought I closed it,” Keith grumbled.   
“Oh, and RRED’s been missing for days. Care to explain why she’s in your closet? Without a head?”

Keith reached over the side of the bed, pulling out one of the drawers built into the frame. He withdrew RRED’s head and tossed it in Coran’s direction.

“Here.”

Coran sighed and set her on the desk. He clasped his hands together and leaned forward in the chair, his expression softening as he tried to meet Keith’s eyes. Keith focused instead on the lock of orange hair that had sprung free from his slicked-back style, resting gently on his forehead.

“Why didn’t you just ask?” Coran implored. “She was your mother, not a secret. Her things are yours now, we wouldn’t have kept them from you.”

Keith didn’t say anything. In truth, he hadn’t thought of it that way.

“If you ever wanted to talk about her, you know I’m a good source. I knew her,” Coran said. “She would’ve been a good mother, if the way she was with little Shiro and Allura was any indicator. Sometimes, instead of being in meetings, she’d go and play with them instead and we’d have to watch her play _space explorers_ with them for ages.”

Keith looked away. He didn’t really want to hear about the way his mother had played with other kids. Shiro had tried to talk about her before, too—he’d said she was like another mother to him, and Keith had wanted to throw his monitor across the room. Instead he had hung up early and locked up his room and cried for what felt like hours, because Shiro got to know her, got to think of her as a _second mother_ when she didn’t get to be Keith’s mother at all. Just the vessel that bore him into existence and left him to live and die in a hunk of metal on mars.

He didn’t want to know how she’d loved other children when she’d only held him once, and he couldn’t even remember it. He didn’t want to talk about how alive she’d been, when he’d only ever known her dead. He didn’t want to hear about how much people loved her when he’d never gotten a chance, didn’t want to listen to them say she loved him so much when he’d spent so much time feeling betrayed by her.

He just wanted to learn about her quietly, to hold her things in his hands and imagine part of her was still there, in them. Or perhaps he’d imagine her reading the books in this box, wearing the clothes he’d seen in the locker, keeping a wallet-photo of Keith with her instead of Shiro. Maybe he’d talk about her with them someday, but not today.

“I’m sorry, Coran. Could you leave now, please?”

Coran looked like he wanted to talk about it, and he opened his mouth to do so before he thought better of it. Keith rolled over onto his stomach as Coran rose from his chair, taking the few steps towards the door. He left RRED’s head on the desk, probably expecting Keith to undo the damage he’d done.

“Keith, how did you get into her locker?” Coran asked, standing in the doorway. “No one knew the passcode she used.”

“The code was my name.”

In Keith’s peripheral vision, Coran nodded slowly, unsurprised. Then he left Keith alone with the box full of memories that weren’t even his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter is just Keith and Keith feels, as most of the first half or so of this story will be. I'm feeling this will be a lot of little chapters and a kind of slow burn, so bear with me! I promise there's some really good stuff to come.   
> These first few chapters are also achingly similar to the movie I'm loosely basing the fic on, so it might seem kind of familiar right now but as I said, the inspiration came from the movie but most of the things that happen will be different.   
> Sorry for the slow update, I'm a busy bee with a lot of college stuff to do. 
> 
> My tumblr is ganseyisourking if anyone is interested. My blog is multifandom as heck but there's a lot of Voltron there right now!


	4. Superheroes

Keith spent a while digging through her things. He didn’t read much of her letters, after finding a rather explicit comment about how much “Ken” missed all the intimate parts of her body. The shuddering discomfort he’d felt upon reading that led him to bury them in the bottom of the box, deciding that these private correspondences should stay private. After removing each of her knick-knacks—a figurine of a superhero, a rainbow prism, a plastic unicorn, a chunky purple crystal just like one that Keith had seen behind Shiro in the Altea offices, and a necklace with a kitschy space shuttle pendant that she’d worn in most of the pictures he’d seen of her. This, Keith looped around his neck, adjusting the chain so that the pendant fell low on his chest, longer than the way she’d worn it.

Once he’d unpacked her trinkets and dusted them off carefully, Keith moved on to her books. He traced the titles on their worn spines, counting nonfiction volumes about the cosmos and other galaxies, numerous books by an author called Neil Gaiman, whose name sounded very familiar to Keith, and a battered copy of Shakespeare’s _The Tempest_. He opened the front cover to find that his mother had circled the name Miranda on the character page and labeled it in loopy yet lopsided handwriting: “baby name!”

Keith placed them all in the empty spaces between his own books before starting to look through the comics, flipping through them to view the brightly illustrated bangs and pops and pows, wondering what it was about them that she had liked. He understood why so many of them were space-oriented, with galactic travelers saving the universe instead of just a city, but she was fond of _Wolverine_ and _The Amazing Spider-Man_ too. Keith wondered what the draw was for her. He picked up a volume of _Spider-Man_ near the bottom of the pile—he’d figured out early on that her organization system was pretty much nonexistent—and revealed a cover that sparked his interest. There were a few more like it, and Keith laid them out on his bed.

He’d watched _The X-Files_ with Coran and another scientist and investor, Vincent Thace, who’d come to East Texas when Keith was twelve and had only left a year ago, but he’d given Keith his “I Want To Believe” poster to hang up in his room because he’d liked the show and liked to talk about aliens with Thace. Keith had hung it above his bed, though sometimes he felt a little lonely at the sight of it, or jealous that Thace got to go back to the Earth that Keith had never known.

He wondered why Coran had never mentioned that Keith’s mother had liked _The X-Files,_ especially considering how he’d insisted that Keith watch it.

Keith climbed off of the bed, feeling overwhelmed. The sheer amount of information in this box was starting to get to him, so he left his mother’s things spread across his covers and sat down at his desk, leaning on his elbows. All he’d had of her for years were the pieces people deigned to share with him, whenever they let things slip into conversation. Whenever someone mentioned her by name, told a story she’d been there for, or told him he was like her. (“But angrier,” Slav had said, without looking up from his tablet while Keith helped him fix the irrigation system in the agriculture wing, “She was disproportionately carefree, considering that she was usually surrounded by the unpredictable vacuum of space.”)

 He pushed his computer mouse to wake up his screen, checking the time. It was late. Had it really been so long since he’d broken into the storage room after lunch? Keith made the calculations to figure out what time it was in Arizona, finding that Lance’s family was probably just finishing dinner. If he didn’t have dish duty tonight, he’d probably be online. Keith logged into Club Voltron, finding Lance’s profile picture was indeed in the ONLINE column.

 **Martian-King:** Hey

 **BlueSharpshooter:** HEEEEEY

 **BlueSharpshooter:** Hunk is over!

 **BlueSharpshooter:** He says hello

 **Martian-King:** I say hello back I guess

Keith leaned back in his chair and watched his message get sent. The site notified him that Lance had seen it, but there was a long pause. He hated to interrupt Lance’s time with his best friend, hated to impose. He wondered what that was like, to have people one’s own age that could actually visit. He wondered what it would be like to be part of that, to be with Lance and Hunk playing games or studying or whatever normal high school boys got to do.

**BlueSharpshooter is calling**

Keith hesitated before accepting the call, watching as Lance was slowly rendered on screen. At first, he was a blur of movement—his face was turned towards Hunk, who was sitting in the background bathed in the bluey glow of the television in Lance’s basement. Lance was lying on his stomach in front of his computer, supporting himself with his arms in front of him, which were bare thanks to the red tank top that was falling off of one shoulder. Keith felt flustered; he told himself it was because of all his mother’s things and all the new parts of her he knew, but he wasn’t sure if that was the only thing.

“No, no,” Lance was saying, his voice coming through Keith’s speakers finally. He didn’t seem to see Keith yet, so Keith assumed the connection wasn’t going both ways. “You can’t get out of it now, you said she’s cute.”

Keith turned to his keyboard.

 **Martian-King:** I can see you, can you see me?

Lance turned at the notification, his face lighting up further when he saw Keith. He waved, a streak of color across the screen, and then started typing something.

 **BlueSharpshooter:** I’m wheedling information out of Hunk about his CRUSH

 **Martian-King:** Crush?

 **BlueSharpshooter:** You know, when you think someone is LITERALLY THE CUTEST and all you want to do is SMOOCH THEM

 **BlueSharpshooter:** I’m an expert, Keith

 **Martian-King:** I know what it means I’m just not super familiar with the concept. It requires knowing people.

 **BlueSharpshooter:** Just a little bit, my man. But there’s celebrity crushes, too? Or internet crushes. You can crush on internet people too, if you really really reallllyyy like talking to them and stuff? Idk man, it’s hard to get if you’ve never had one

Hunk’s face appeared closer to the screen as he read over their messages. Lance let him, ruffling his hair over the top of his orange headband when he was done typing. After the last message was sent, Hunk started poking Lance in the ribs, Lance squawking and swatting at him in response.

“Stooooop.”

“You’re an expert…crushes,” Hunk was saying, some of his words lost to the connection. There was something in his voice that Keith didn’t get, so he looked between them and turned back to the keyboard.

 **Martian-King:** So Hunk has a crush on someone?

Lance read his message and laughed. His mouth was moving, but all that came out was fragmented sound. Hunk was covering his hands with his face. Keith shook his head and Lance stopped gesturing, his fingers instead landing on the keys in front of him.

 **BlueSharpshooter:** YES she’s lovely her name is Shay

Another messaging window popped up on Keith’s screen.

 **GetHunky:** Please do not listen to him Keith

 **Martian-King:** You still haven’t figured out how to change your username from what Lance gave you, huh?

 **GetHunky:** It’s kind of growing on me

Lance made a screeching sound and started batting at Hunk. “Stop bothering Keith.”

 **Martian-King:** Hunk isn’t bothering me, you’re bothering me

Lance sent him a slew of sad-face emojis. Keith shook his head, watching as his screen blew up with more notifications—all messages Lance was typing out about this girl Shay, who apparently was in family and consumer sciences class with Lance and Hunk. The class itself interested Keith more than the stories about the girl. She sounded very nice, and he thought it was nice that Hunk liked someone so well suited for him, but he didn’t know Hunk as well as he knew Lance (unfortunately—Hunk seemed warm and wonderful and Keith would give anything for a friendship like the one that Lance had with him). When Lance described the little interactions Hunk had with Shay, the focus was supposed to be on how cute and awkward they were—not the cooking lessons or tutorials in check-writing or pop quizzes on pros and cons of credit cards.

When the talk about girls finally died down—because Lance took the opportunity to talk about other girls, which was in character for him—Keith looked at his mother’s things again. His fingers hovered over the keys, hesitating, before he wrote another message to Lance.

 **Martian-King:** So I found some of my mom’s old stuff today

 **Martian-King:** She liked Spider-Man, apparently. She had his comics.

 **BlueSharpshooter:** !!!!! that’s so cool man

 **BlueSharpshooter:** I LOVE Spiderman

Keith held up a finger, signaling for Lance to wait a second, before he returned to the mess of his bed to fish out a few of his mother’s comics. He carried them over to the desk and set them beside the keyboard, holding each one up for Lance to look at and watching the delight on his face grow brighter and brighter.

 **BlueSharpshooter:** Your mom is so cool, dude. Mine doesn’t get the superhero thing. Especially not masked vigilantes—Ma likes rules and they like to break them

 **BlueSharpshooter:** How did someone like that become so overbearing? You always talk about how they don’t let you leave and your house might as well be a prison

Keith swallowed thickly. Lance didn’t know. Lance only knew what Keith had told him, which had been lies. It didn’t make sense for a kid to be living without parents, so he’d made some up—and those fabricated parents had the same philosophy that the scientists and the Altea Company did: Keith could never leave.

His vision was blurry, now. Keith pulled back from the monitor and tried to wipe discreetly at his runny nose, mumbling about a cold in case Lance could hear. As he restacked the Spider-Man comics he looked away from the screen, where Lance stared at him in silence, as if Keith had muted him. He hadn’t.

 **Martian-King:** I have to go. Talk later.

 **BlueSharpshooter:** See you, buddy

Keith ended the video call and logged out of Club Voltron, waiting until he was face-to-face with a dark screen and his own reflection to finally allow the tears to flow. He hated that he had painted her as the villain in his story when she shouldn’t have been, and he hated that it held some truth—she wasn’t the one keeping him on Mars, but she was the reason he had to be there in the first place. He wished she’d waited to leave, so she could leave him on Earth with whoever his father was. He wished they’d turned back the second they found out, so he could be born there instead of here, in a metal box surrounded by red wasteland. He didn’t care about the expedition, about her chance to be the first woman on mars, about the Altea project’s schedule—if she’d had him on Earth, she would’ve lived. If she’d never had him at all, she would’ve lived.

Keith looked to the box of her things, where the disc sat unopened. He grabbed the case with trembling hands and popped it open, placing the disc in the drive on his computer and watching his screen wake up again as it processed the disc.

A window opened on his desktop, displaying a cheesy menu screen with white bells and flower petals, a track of a bridal march playing softly as it waited for him to press play.

What he expected to be a video was a long slideshow of wedding photos, though the officiant was dressed in a golden suit that looked nothing like a priest’s and the groom was wearing massive pink sunglasses and his mother was in a white and blue sundress with her spaceship pendant at her neck. Her cheeks were redder than usual, her hair the same flyaway mess it was in every other picture, and she wore a toothy grin in every single picture except the one where her groom touched her hair reverently and kissed her deeply. Ken, that must’ve been Ken.

He must’ve been Keith’s father. Everyone else who’d told him about his mother talked about the mystery man she’d been with, who she was always talking about excitedly while keeping his identity a secret. It was fun to her, they’d said. She liked to leave people wondering, liked to keep her personal life an enigma. So no one had known who Keith’s father was, and no one could tell Keith what he was missing, or contact the man to tell him he had a son.

No one had known she’d married him, either.

Keith hadn’t played the disc expecting to feel better or worse—he’d just wanted to see her. To remember that she was real, maybe, or to remember things he hadn’t been there for. But then it wasn’t remembering, was it? How could he piece together things to make a person, how could he build a mother from things other people told him, without having ever known her himself? Instead, he was left thinking about the father that he also didn’t have. The father who was out there somewhere but probably didn’t even know about him, because Keith was a well-kept secret.

Nothing had really changed, but somehow Keith still felt more alone than before.


	5. The Life of a Sea Monkey

Allura Edwards had a stack of papers on her desk and an inbox full of unread emails from various heads of departments, but she was playing solitaire. It was the version that had come with her computer, that she hadn’t known was there until she’d caught Shiro playing it while in a meeting and had cautiously inquired whether he’d show her how. Ever-convinced that he was subordinate to her, Shiro had slammed his laptop shut and apologized profusely and it had taken three days of prodding to coerce him into giving her a short lesson on the digital card game. She still hadn’t gotten through to him that his position as assistant-Chairman, Chief of Operations, and the overseer of several new project was more vital to the company than her vice presidency any day of the week, though. He was more impressive, too. Like her, he was involved in the company because of his parents, but the younger Shirogane was far more impressive in terms of what he’d done for Altea. He’d taken over ownership of his father’s shares in the company as soon as he’d turned eighteen, and by the time Allura took her position as VP he had been through flight school and earned an online business degree, and had given himself over completely to the company and its mission. Now, he’d been an official co-owner and senior officer for longer than his father, who had all but severed ties with the Altea company only five years after the Mars landing.

Allura wasn’t expecting Shiro when he appeared at the door to her office, his laptop open and balanced on his forearm as he shouldered the door open on his other side. Shiro had taken to walking around the office sans prosthetic, and now he was only sporting his gel sleeve as he rushed inside and set his computer down on the desk before her. The sense of urgency was yet another surprise to Allura—he seemed almost angry, but mostly flustered and uncertain.

“Coran,” he said, spinning the laptop to face her. Coran waved onscreen, opening his mouth to greet her, but Shiro was already speaking again, “Miss Edwards, we absolutely can’t allow it.”

“Allura,” she corrected.

“Allura,” he said. “It’s too risky.”

Coran shook his head. “I shouldn’t have gone to Takashi first. I thought he would understand my request, Allura, but it appears I was wrong. I’m only suggesting this now, but I intend to bring it up more seriously at the next conference with the board.”

“Go on,” said Allura, giving Shiro a warning look when he opened his mouth to protest. He frowned and ran his hand through his hair before making a gesture that indicated he was giving in. “What is the issue, Coran?”

“It’s about Keith,” he began, and Allura understood at once why Shiro was particularly upset. Despite only speaking to Keith for scheduled meetings, he’d formed a bond with Keith and cared about how he was doing, was proud when he succeeded in his studies and concerned when he reported that he’d broken something again or when other scientists described him as odd and antisocial. “I’m concerned about him. East Texas was never a place meant for a child, and certainly not for a young man who should be having experiences and socializing with people his own age. It’s not healthy. I’m going to propose that the company start making plans to bring him home.”

Allura didn’t know Keith the way Shiro and Coran did. She didn’t know how he was, didn’t know why Shiro was so fond of him. She understood Coran—Coran was a man who’d always been nurturing at heart, had always wanted children, but instead of settling down with a family he’d worked tirelessly for the Altea company and for Allura’s father. She remembered how wonderful he was to her when she was young, and how she’d always thought of him like another father figure. She supposed his relationship to Keith was similar; a surrogate parent, who loved him and worried for him and probably knew what was best for him.

But as Coran launched into a description of what Keith would have to go through before it was safe for him to go to Earth—surgeries and therapies, just so he could _survive_ —Allura looked to Shiro. He seemed almost sickened by the idea of putting Keith through all of that, even if the end result improved his life. Shiro loved Keith and the thought of losing him was terrifying, and even more than she didn’t want to see the boy get hurt, she didn’t want to watch Shiro fall apart.

“I think…” Allura began, looking between the man on screen and the man beside her, both of whom she respected and cared for dearly. She couldn’t decide who knew best in this case, as both of their opinions mattered greatly to her. She’d have to consult the board, and at least one trusted medical professional, and probably the boy himself—if he didn’t want to come to Earth and was content living his life on East Texas, it wasn’t fair to uproot him. She wondered what her father would’ve done. “I think we should discuss this at a later date.”

Coran stopped rambling and she watched his furry eyebrows lower softly, discouraged. Shiro sighed heavily.

“Very well, then,” said the man on the screen. “It was wonderful to speak with the both of you. I should be getting back to my duties.”

“Goodbye, Coran,” Allura said, and Coran signed off.

“Thank you,” Shiro said to her, taking his laptop and closing it, tucking the machine under his arm as he prepared to return to his desk. “If you don’t mind, I think I have a call to make.

 ****

Keith tipped backwards in his chair. Onscreen, Shiro was talking about his baseball paraphernalia, specifically the autographed ball and framed trading card he kept in his office at the Altea headquarters. The office was small and windowless, like Keith’s room, but the difference was that Shiro preferred not to have the sun shining in on him when he was working, not to be distracted by whatever was going on outside.  Keith hated that he had no window, but at the same time he was grateful that he wasn’t constantly reminded of the dead and dusty landscape outside his walls.

“My dad’s a collector of things that are mostly useless,” Shiro mused. “I guess he passed on the habit. He also gave me most of this stuff, for Christmas and especially around my birthday—you know, because I was a leap-year baby and I almost never had actual birthdays.”

“Did my mom collect stuff?” Keith asked, rocking in his chair.

“Stop that, you’re going to fall,” said Shiro. “And yeah, she did. You mentioned you found some of her things—she must’ve brought some comics up there, yeah? I remember this little spat she and Dad had, about whether she should let me touch her comics. She didn’t even keep them in the plastic and he was just… _appalled_. He didn’t even care about them but he thought she wasn’t a true collector if she let them gather dust and let her gross little godson touch them with his oily fingers.”

“You don’t have to lock something away in order to love it.”

Shiro paused, his mouth held open for a moment before he agreed, “Yeah, I guess you’re right. She did let me read them. She said they were meant to be read. I was very careful, as careful as you can be when you’re seven. She never told my dad.”

“Your dad doesn’t seem like a lot of fun,” said Keith. Shiro laughed.

“No, he was when I was really young. He took me places and gave me things and played with me,” Shiro said. “He wasn’t really the same after…after your mom died. They were so close, and I think she was a big part of who he was, or something. He still gave me things, but he didn’t laugh as much, and half the time he seemed like he was somewhere else. Now he’s pretty much out of the picture. He’s not all that bad, just…lost. Sad.”

Keith could relate. It always seemed like people’s identities were tied to their family, to the people they loved. He had never had a family, just scientists that came and went every few years, though a few had never left. The most consistent figure in Keith’s life was Coran, who had arrived when Keith was very small and had taught him how to spell his name with crayons he’d brought from Earth specifically for Keith. It was one of his earliest memories—Coran’s voice coming from behind his moustache, almost like he didn’t have a mouth, his hands guiding Keith’s across the paper and leaving a trail of waxy red letters.

“Keith,” Shiro said, throwing a wrench in their mutual reminiscence. “May I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“Are you…lonely?”

Keith stared at Shiro, who watched him expectantly. The man on his screen was wide-eyed and full of emotion, but Keith couldn’t figure out what kind of emotion it was.

“Well. Yeah. I’m the only kid on this planet,” Keith said. “It’s pretty fucking lonely. I don’t have anything here, Shiro. No family or friends or post-secondary education options. I’m like…a sea monkey or something.”

“A sea monkey?” Shiro asked, perplexed.

“Yeah. I was born here and I’ll die here.”

“What if…what if you didn’t have to?” asked Shiro. “What if there was a way for you to come to Earth?”

Keith huffed. “Kind of a cruel question, considering Altea would never let me do that.”

“Okay, but what if?”

“Shiro. Shiro, really? I thought you would’ve figured this out by now,” he said. “I’d give _anything_.”

 ****

“All in favor?” Allura asked the conference room. She watched several hands lift themselves from the table. Onscreen, Coran enthusiastically waved his own hand. Shiro shifted beside her—she thought he was just fidgeting in his seat, but when she looked over she saw that he had also raised his hand.

Allura raised an eyebrow in questioning. Shiro leaned closer and whispered, “I talked to Keith.”

“Oh? And what did he say?”

“He’d give anything to be on Earth. Also, that you don’t have to lock something away in order to love it.”

She nodded, and Shiro straightened in his seat. Allura counted the hands of the board members, but she really didn’t have to. She could tell that those in favor outnumbered those against, even with all the risks they had presented. Coran had argued his case strongly and Shiro hadn’t offered a single word of protest, and now she understood why. Keith’s development as a person was greatly affected by his confinement to East Texas, and the board seemed to understand that—their sentimentality and ethicality won against the very real possibility that this could blow up in the face of the company. If something happened, they’d have to answer for it.

“And all against?” Allura asked, for formality’s sake. Three hands.

“Okay. This matter has been decided,” said Allura. She looked over to Shiro, who looked satisfied but not unconcerned. The road ahead was rough and frightening, but it was for the best. “We’re finally bringing him home.”


	6. Earth

Keith lowered himself carefully to the floor in the middle of the running track and lay his head down on the rubberized material that covered the entire gymnasium. He’d been running before, as a way to work off his weird angsty energy as he went through puberty, but he never cared how far he’d gone—only how it felt to run.

Now, it felt like absolute shit.

It had been a while since his surgery, where they’d increased his bone density with specialized rods inserted into his body. He was mostly rehabilitated, but the training regimen that Coran and the medical staff had him on was more than just rehab—it was preparing him for months of space travel and life on Earth. And while he no longer felt the pain of healing incisions and adapting bones and general recovery, the training was still exhausting and made him want to lay there on the floor and do nothing for hours.

“What are you doing, space cadet?” a voice inquired from above him. Keith opened his eyes to see Coran standing over him, towering and formidable, except for the fact that Coran was probably the least terrifying man Keith had ever seen, moustache and all.

“Ha. Space cadet.”

“Your regimen is much like the ones used to train astronauts on earth,” Coran explained, in that educational way of his. “With the exception of the gravity. They are used to much more of it, I’m afraid, and you are accustomed to what it is like here. Additionally, their way has already been paved. We are quite unsure how your body will react to being on Earth.”

“Once I’m on Earth, I’m never going to space again. Never,” said Keith, pushing himself back into an upright seating position. “Sure, it’s your thing, and it was my mom’s thing, but I’ve had enough space.”

Coran chuckled and offered Keith a hand to help him up. Keith let Coran help haul him to his feet and then reassuringly pat his shoulder.

“Another month, Keith, and you’ll be on the ship home. And I’ll be right there with you,” said Coran.

“A month seems like forever.”

Coran sighed. “It’ll be over in no time, my boy.”

 ****

Keith found the time aboard the shuttle to be the worst seven months of his life. One of the scientists traveling back to Earth made a comment to him about how he should feel right at home, considering he’d spent most of his gestation period in a spaceship, but Keith had just glared at him and pushed off the wall, doing a somersault in the air and floating away.

Being locked in an airborne—if you could even call space travel being airbourne—tube made Keith more stir crazy than ever. All there was to do was reading, since he didn’t really have a job aboard the ship. At least on East Texas, he could wander the halls, crawl through the vents (which he had made a habit of since the first incident, with various interesting results), play games on his computer and talk to Lance. Not being able to talk to Lance was the worst—he’d given him a heads up that he would be AWOL for a while but it didn’t feel like enough. Not to mention, he just missed their group chats on Club Voltron and the competitive way they played games together and the stupid smile on Lance’s face when they were video chatting and he won. Keith wanted to beat him for the sake of beating him, but also sometimes wanted to lose just so he could see Lance’s triumphant grin or watch him dance around the room.

By the time they landed, Keith was overjoyed to get off the shuttle, but everyone around him insisted he take his time getting off. Upon arrival, there were aides to help them all off the ship, handing off breathing masks and sunglasses and guiding them as they lumbered to the transportation that would bring them to Altea. Keith felt smothered by the attention, but he felt so many more things—the heaviness of Earth’s gravitational pull, the warmth of the sun on his skin, the sounds and sights and the feel of the air in his lungs. He never knew he could feel so foreign and yet so euphoric at the same time.

On the way to the Altea Company, Keith asked Coran every question he could think of about Earth, and about what he was seeing through the windows as they rolled through the countryside, away from the gulf where they’d landed and towards Houston. Keith had read about NASA’s space center there, and how Altea had built their own base of operations on the nearest property they could find, making their collaboration with NASA easier. He couldn’t believe he would get to see the sprawling Altea compound where Shiro worked; that he would get to see Shiro in person, finally. And then, hopefully, eventually, Lance and Hunk and all their friends. Maybe he could go to college with them—Lance would have chosen a school by now, and Keith could figure out how to get in, couldn’t he? Keith had never looked into colleges, never even thought about it, but now there was a whole world, a whole new planet, of possibilities.

Of all the things about Earth he’d seen, the way his stomach flip-flopped in anticipation of seeing Lance was one of his favorites.  

When they reached the gates of the Altea compound, Keith leaned against the window and took in as much of the sight as he could. The gate was an angular archway that vehicles passed under, after approval by a computerized gatekeeper that identified who was scheduled to be on the compound and when. He asked Coran if field trip groups had clearance to get through the gates, if school busses could fit under the arch, and then, because it occurred to him that he didn’t know, Keith asked how big school busses were. Coran humored him, answering his questions as their van was given entry to the compound, driving past the scenic courtyards with topiary sculptures and bright green lawns, around towering buildings that had windows for walls, to a parking lot behind a building marked SILENA EDWARDS MEDICAL COMPLEX.

“Silena was Allura’s mother,” Coran explained as they were unloaded from the vehicle and escorted through the doors of the medical center, where Keith was plopped in a wheelchair and separated from Coran for the rest of the afternoon, so a group of bubbly personnel in pink uniforms could run tests on him.

It was evening before Keith was alone again, picking at the thin fabric of the clothes they’d given him after they’d poked him several times and ushered him into a room with extra doors—apparently it was quarantine, which made Keith’s happiness dissipate into something bitter and more akin to disappointment. He thought coming to Earth meant he’d be free, but now after a few hours of the freedom; the sights and the sounds and all the new feelings, he was just in another cage. A sterilized, medical, practical cage, but a cage all the same.

Not even the huge windows overlooking the grounds made him feel better about it—it was like they were taunting him with what he couldn’t have. This, along with the fact that his window faced the west and the sun was shining right into it, led him to draw the shades over them and switch on a dim lamp beside the bed.

Keith was reading one of his mother’s books that he’d brought along, the only one he hadn’t yet finished, when a knock on the inner door of his quarantine room startled him. Keith looked up from his book but didn’t move to answer it, as whoever it was would open the door and walk in anyway. Here, things were out of his control—at least on Mars he’d had some semblance of privacy and autonomy.

Shiro walked into the room, shutting the door tightly behind him. He was bigger than Keith expected, in height and the width of his shoulders, and his scars looked a little pinker in real life. Most of the time when they’d video chatted, Shiro hadn’t bothered with his prosthetic, but he wore it today, hidden mostly by the long sleeve of his black button-up. A messenger bag that had seen better days hung from his shoulder, and he twirled his keyring around his finger.

“Hey, I wish I could’ve come by sooner!” said Shiro, ambling over to the chair at Keith’s bedside. Keith wasn’t lying down like his doctors had suggested, but rather sitting cross-legged on the bed, hunched slightly over his book. He set the novel aside to follow Shiro with his eyes as he perched on the edge of the seat. “Busy day today, lots of things happening. We’re all so glad you’re here, but there’s also a lot of work that comes with it.”

Shiro was smiling brightly, and he dropped his keys in his lap in favor of resting his hand on the edge of Keith’s bed. When Keith didn’t reply with anything but a stony look on his face—even though he was kind of happy to see Shiro—the older man continued.

“Anyway, enough about that,” he said. “How are you feeling, bud? Happy to be home?”

Keith scoffed. “This is hardly home. This,” he gestured around the room, “is another lockup, with different rules.”

Keith hated to see it, but Shiro’s face fell.

“I’m sorry. You know this is necessary—we want to make sure you’re a-okay before we let you go outside or have contact with a lot of people,” he explained, but he sounded just as disappointed about it as Keith did. “It’s for your safety.”

“For how long?”

“Well, there’s a few more tests to run and they want to see how they react to all the vaccinations they pumped into you. But after that, if you get the all clear…”

“How long, though?”

“Couple days.”

A ringing sound could be heard faintly from within Shiro’s bag. He sighed heavily.

“That’s my father, he’s called me ten times today.”

“Shirogane?”

“The very same. No one told him you were coming,” said Shiro, shaking his head. The phone stopped ringing, and Keith knew just enough about cell phones to guess that it had gone to voicemail. “And he thinks it’s his place to be upset about that. Don’t worry about it, he’s got no business caring what the company does when he left it willingly, thirteen flipping years ago.”

“Your dad isn’t _that bad_ , though, right?” Keith asked, turning his mother’s book over in his hands. Wishing he had a father to drive him crazy, a mother to worry over him like the Altea company did. Instead he had the well-meaning uncle-father-figure that was Coran, who had been stuck in testing for a long time himself, and Shiro. Whatever Shiro was.

“No, he’s not. Just frustrating. Listen, bud, I better call him back or he’ll never stop,” said Shiro, rising to his feet and scooping up his keys with the mechanical hand that Keith hadn’t even realized had any mobility. Noticing the look on Keith’s face, Shiro smiled. “Sweet, isn’t it? Altea has its hands in all kinds of tech markets, you know. After my accident, Alfor authorized a whole new branch of the company to innovate and manufacture prosthetics. Guess he likes me or something.”

“Will I see you tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Shiro said, and he leaned in to hug Keith, pulling Keith’s upper body toward him and squeezing briefly before letting go and making his way to the door. “See you then.”

He left Keith alone to wonder if it would really work out the way Shiro said—would his body react adversely to the vaccines? Would something else go wrong? Would they have to keep him longer, or worse, send him back?

Keith shuddered. If there was anything worse than staying in this clinical cell, it was being sent back to the very place he’d risked everything to leave.

 ****

Shiro strode through the hallways of the medical building and out into the courtyard. Most of the day employees were on their way to their cars or shuttles or they had already left, and the night time maintenance and custodial staff was moving in. Shiro greeted those he passed, and because of the landing, several medical personnel had to take night shifts, so he passed some of them too on his way to his car.

“What do you want?” he demanded. “I’m a busy man, Dad, I don’t have time for your misplaced complaints.”

“You let them bring him here, Takashi? Knowing the risks?” his father ranted, as if Shiro hadn’t really said anything at all. “That boy could die on this planet.”

“I didn’t let them. I do not make all the decisions,” Shiro said. “I don’t know how it worked when you actually had a say in this company, but now the board makes collective decisions. But, if you must now, I voted yes.”

“You have to send him back.”

“He’s not like a toy you can just return, Dad, he’s a person,” Shiro said, feeling his voice rise in volume and pitch. “Ugh. Fuck, Dad. He’s technically an adult now. Are you so out of touch that you forgot he’s not a little kid that we can just uproot?”

Shiro had to admit, that part was a little bit about him. After leaving Altea when Shiro was a teenager, his father had moved them all over the place and barely managed to keep up with the shared custody agreements with his mother—when she’d filed for sole custody, the courts had granted it without a second glance.

“He wants to be here. He needs to be here. He might not have family, not really, but Altea can support him. He deserves to finally be normal.”

“Of course he has family,” Shirogane spat.

Shiro paused, and the line went quiet. His father hadn’t meant to say it, Shiro knew that much—he’d just blurted it in the heat of the moment, like he did when he told Shiro that it didn’t matter how hard he worked or what he achieved, he’d never be the man who helped create Altea from scratch. That had been the first Christmas in a long time that Shiro had thought to reach out to his father, and when he left abruptly in the middle of an ice storm, he’d crashed on the highway a mile away.

“Something you’re not telling me?” Shiro asked, but the man on the other end stayed silent.

“He has a _father_ , Takashi.”

“Yeah, I know. But who?”

The ringing in his ear signified that this time, his father really did hang up.


	7. You Are Not Alone

Through the small window in the door to his room, Keith could see that Coran was pacing just outside.  Because Keith knew Coran as well as he did, he knew what pacing meant—he was working up the courage to share something significant with Keith, and the amount of time it was taking didn’t make Keith feel good about the impending news at all. The pacing itself practically gave it away, and Keith felt his heart breaking. They were going to send him back.

After he’d said that he would give anything to be here, and had agreed to risky surgery and recovered completely and gone through all the training they’d given, they were going to rip him away from everything he’d ever wanted when he’d barely even tasted it. He was going to be alone again.

When Coran finally entered the room, Keith said, “You don’t have to say it. I know I have to go back to Mars.”

It was all he could do not to start crying.

“No. No, my boy. Not yet,” Coran winced at the admission that there was still a good chance that Keith was right. “While we’re waiting for some more results, the medical staff has elected to remove you from quarantine. That’s all I’ve come to say. But Keith, they did warn against getting your hopes up.”

“My hopes were already up,” Keith said, pushing up from the bed and trudging over to his suitcase. It was laying open atop the dresser that had come in the room, contents scattered around it, but when Keith reached it he began to toss everything back inside.

“I know,” Coran said, and his voice sounded sad.

“What was even the point?” Keith demanded, throwing a book down into the bag forcefully, as forcefully as he could in his weakened state. He spun to face Coran, hot tears rolling down his cheek. “How could they bring me here, bring me _home_ , just to throw me out again? I’m no one out there. I have no friends and no family”—at this, Coran frowned, and Keith knew it must have stung to be dismissed, and he didn’t really mean it like that, just that he was so lonely, that his mother was dead, that he had grown up angry and longing—“Earth is the only place I can have that, and they don’t even want me here! Earth is the only place where I can have a real future.”

“What if you can’t, Keith?” Coran asked softly. “I know it’s hard to think about, but…”

“I don’t care! I’d rather die, Coran.” Keith was sort of screaming, and his words were distorted by the sobbing. He leaned back against the dresser and slid down it, sinking to the floor like an overdramatic child. All he could think of was how nothing had ever been right on Mars, and he’d never felt truly at home. No one understood him there, and there was no one like him. It wasn’t just that everyone was older, but also that they were all so much smarter, and saw him as impulsive and irrationally angry all the time, and _why wasn’t he more like Elle_? Or like their perfect children back home, whom they never saw because they were there, miles and miles away. Keith curled into as small a shape as possible, letting the sounds come out of him as he trembled and rocked on the floor.

Coran didn’t say anything, just crossed the room and sat down beside Keith, silently keeping him company while he fell apart and while he put himself back together again. Coran wasn’t really the guy who knew what to say, but he had watched Keith grow up, and knew his emotions were tumultuous and that it wasn’t easy to be in his position. He had given as much as he could, telling Keith about his own difficult childhood, wrought with bullying. And when there wasn’t really anything to say anymore, Coran left when Keith asked him to and stayed if he didn’t. That was their understanding.

Keith stood up with immense effort, denying help when Coran offered it. Taking a deep breath, he wiped the remaining wet spots from his face and turned back to his bag. Keith packed his remaining belongings carefully, retrieving a couple of items from his bedside, and zipped the suitcase closed. In the meantime, Coran had stood again as well, brushed himself off, and went to wait by the door.

“When will the room be ready for me?” Keith asked, his voice as level as he could get it. Determined not to let it break, not to let himself break again, at least not in front of someone else.

“It’s ready now, if you are.”

“Okay, let’s go then.”

The room that Coran and an accompanying aide led him to was smaller than the quarantine cell, surprisingly. The bed was pushed up against the wall and looked less like a hospital cot, and against the other wall, there was a desk and a dresser just like the one he had left behind in quarantine. The windows in this room were much smaller and had blinds drawn over them, so only small slivers of sunlight crept into the room.

“You’re free to come and go from this room. There’s a restroom with showers down the hall,” said the nurse who was making the bed as they walked in, fluffing a pillow as she did so. “We hope this is more comfortable than your previous room, Mr. Kogane.”

“Keith,” Keith corrected. “It’s Keith.”

Being called by his last name made him feel like a novelty, or like an out-of-town businessman. Like he wasn’t a kid but something weird and alien. He supposed no one was really used to dealing with teenage boys who grew up on Mars, but he wasn’t really that different, was he? The whole idea perplexed and annoyed Keith, so he exhaled sharply and migrated to the opposite side of the room from the nurse, sitting down in the desk chair and crossing his arms. He watched her impassively until she stopped carefully tucking the microfiber blanket under the mattress and glanced up, squirming under his gaze before she finally finished and left the room. The other staff member who carried his bag brought it in, Keith following him across the room as he deposited it near the dresser and then scuttled away.

Coran, who lingered near the door, held in his laughter until the medical workers were both gone. Unfazed by Keith’s cool, vaguely intimidating, and very practiced façade, Coran sat on the edge of the bed. He mirrored Keith’s posture and folded his own arms across his chest.

Now that it was just them again, Keith dropped the act and slumped in the chair.

“It’ll be okay,” Coran said. “You’ll be okay.”

Keith got up from the chair and trudged to the bed, where Coran pushed himself to his feet. They stood face to face as Coran reached for Keith, clasping his hands over the boy’s shoulders and squeezing.

“There’s no one on Earth—no, there’s no on in the universe like you,” Coran said, locking his eyes onto Keith’s. He looked so earnest and raw that Keith felt himself open up to what Coran was saying, pulling a brick or two from the wall or perhaps taking off the helmet of his armor so he could listen. “But that doesn’t mean that you are alone.”

**** 

Because he was free to come and go from the room—but he was not, Coran had specified with a warning look in his eyes, to leave the medical complex—Keith wandered the halls for the rest of the morning. It wasn’t the kind of freedom he was desperate for, but it was more like what he was used to on East Texas.

Keith navigated the halls of his floor quickly, finding that it was all just one big square. The inner walls were covered with large windows looking over an atrium in the middle of the building, a floor down from where Keith’s room was, and after exploring his own floor he decided that it was exactly where he meant to go next. He was pleased to find that the ID card they’d given him upon arrival now gave him admittance to stairwells and elevators. Unwisely, Keith chose the stairs, and hobbled down halfway before having to take a break in the middle.

Earth made him feel so heavy, heavier than he had even realized he could feel. He knew it was gravity, but it felt a lot like chains.

He got up again, eventually, and made his way to the atrium. Keith had made sure to bring the dark glasses that the aides had given him when he landed, pushing them onto his face before he opened the glass door to the little indoor garden, surrounded on all sides by the four stories of the medical building, a fortress of sorts. The sun shone down through the skylight overhead, where circles of blue stained glass cast colored light down onto the narrow paths, patterns that wove and twirled and made Keith smile softly. It made him feel fond of this blue planet, like he’d felt when he’d gotten there; the atrium reminded him of what Earth looked like outside. On Mars there was a greenhouse, but it was functional and filled with pipes that jutted out like elbows, not beautiful like this. On Mars, windows looked out onto dusty red wasteland, but here there were so many colors and so many different natural landscapes.

“You’re the space kid,” said a voice behind him as he crouched to examine a flowering plant he’d never seen before. Keith flinched and fell over, landing on his ass and making an undignified grunt-like sound. He turned his head to see a stone bench beside the walkway, with a dedication plaque on the ground in front of it and a small girl perched on top of it.

“Um, what?” Keith managed, pushing himself back up with difficulty. He had been on the ground too many times today, Keith decided.

“The kid from Mars,” said the girl, her eyes flicking up from the tablet in her hands. “Explains your big bug eye glasses for sure. I technically shouldn’t know about you but the whole place has been buzzing about you for fucking months so it’s kind of hard _not_ to know. Your name’s Keith, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Katie. Holt. My brother works up in med tech,” she pointed up and towards the East side of the building. “Mom works closely with the project heads over in the development buildings. Dad is studying ice from Pluto or something in his lab, which is in the ‘Exploraiton Center,’” Katie held up two fingers and bent them at the middle while she said those two words, “Which is the big one in the middle with the dome on top.”

“I saw that one when we drove in,” Keith said.

“Yeah, it’s hard to miss,” she said, with a shrug. “Anyway, that’s why I’m here. Always. But no one really knows why they brought you here, since it was apparently really risky. Didn’t they have to make you into like, a cyborg?”

Keith shook his head. He was far from a cyborg.

“Matt—that’s my brother—said Shirogane senior is highkey pissed about it even though it’s out of his hands. Since he decided he wanted nothing to do with you or with Altea when you were like, five.”

“They brought me here because I was…I guess they thought my social development was…off,” Keith looked down at the plaque, engraved with a name he vaguely recognized, something relating to the history of the Altea company. “I’m glad. I didn’t like living on Mars.”

“Who would? There’s nothing there. And I bet the internet connection is utter shit,” Katie said with a laugh.

“The internet _is_ really bad.”

Keith lingered on the path for a while, until Katie offered him a place on the bench beside her while she waited for her brother to take his lunch hour.

“He’s always late,” she said, shaking her head. “He’s too into whatever sciencey crap he’s doing up there and forgets to check the time and give himself a break.”

“Where does Shiro work?” Keith asked. Katie looked over at him, her expression seeming to soften for a moment before the elfishness returned to her eyes. On her tablet, she pulled up a map of what must’ve been the Altea property.

"Here.”

“That’s not specific,” said Keith, because she was just gesturing to the whole map.

“I know,” she said. “He does something pretty much everywhere. This place is pretty much the only building he doesn’t have a job in, but he comes here anyway to visit Matt and have his arm tinkered with every once in a while. And now, I guess, because you’re here.”

“I won’t be here much longer,” said Keith.

“Okay? Anyway, Shiro’s actual office is in the original Altea building, which is called Altea Command,” she said, pointing to the building in the middle of the horseshoe shape that surrounded the courtyard. There were seven buildings total—two for the innovation and creative aspects of what Altea did, called “development”, as well as Command, the Exploration Center, the Medical Complex, the security building, and the onsite museum. Katie moved her finger across the screen to point to Development. “He also works on projects here and in the EC, and sometimes does talks or tours at the museum. I guess he doesn’t go to security very much, though? It’s a small player in the big game of Altea, and he’s…he’s like everyone’s hero.”

Keith sat back, a little stunned. He had known Shiro was important enough to have an office with big windows and a couch that was probably bigger than Keith’s living quarters on East Texas, but he hadn’t realized how busy Shiro was on any given day or how many parts of the company he was involved in. He hadn’t realized that other people saw Shiro the way he did, like a hero or savior or champion that could take on anything.

“Wow,” was all Keith said. Katie nodded, apparently sharing at least some of his awe towards Takashi Shirogane.

“Hey, who let a pigeon in the atrium?”

A young man had walked in through the door on the opposite side of the atrium, his voice echoing up the walls and making Keith jump. He relaxed as the man approached, and the resemblance between him and Katie became clearer—hair that was light reddish brown, curious brown eyes, matching smiles. Keith wondered how much his own siblings would look like him, if he’d had any. Did he have any? Had his father remarried and had other kids, without knowing about Keith at all?

“This is Matt,” Katie said, pushing to her feet. “Matt, this is the space boy, Keith.”

“There’s not a pigeon in the atrium,” said Keith, looking up at Matt, who was wearing a t-shirt under a lab coat spotted with grease and streaks of dirt. The man’s eyes crinkled behind his glasses when he smiled.  
“No, that’s just my nickname for Katie,” he said. “Because she’s _vermin_.”

Keith must’ve looked confused, because Katie elbowed her brother and added, “Like, because I’m a pest of a younger sister and pigeons are pests. He means it lovingly.”

“Oh,” said Keith. He still didn’t really understand, but he wasn’t about to question it further.

“Uh, so, we’re gonna go to lunch,” Katie said, picking up her bag from where it was laying on the ground beside the bench and slipping her tablet into it. “I’ll see you around, maybe? Like I said, I’m here a lot.”

“Yeah. See you around,” Keith said, but he wasn’t sure if he would. Matt and Katie left together, and as he watched their receding figures, Matt ruffled Katie’s hair and she swatted at him, all the while laughing. It was a real glimpse into what siblings were like, realer than the movies and television and books, and Keith felt the absence of it throbbing in his chest.

Keith was well aware that sometimes family wasn’t about blood relation, but it felt significant to him that for most of his life, his only known relative was his dead mother. That the only other people he’d ever known merely worked around him, like he was just another aspect of living on Mars. Coran was the closest thing he had to family and _just_ Coran wasn’t enough. He hated to admit it, because Coran had always been so good to him, but it was true—Coran had not offered him companionship like siblings would have, Coran had not nursed him or held him as a baby, had not lain with him when he had nightmares or proudly taken pictures of him as he conquered milestones.

Knowing that he had a father, a father who was probably still out there somewhere, tugged at Keith. A sharp spike of determination hit him in the chest—he had to find his father, his mother’s husband, the only person out there who could possibly love her and feel her absence as desperately and painfully as Keith did. The only person who could look at Keith, look him in the eye, and see himself there.

But first, he had to leave the fortress that was Altea. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The real rising action/escalation/good dramatic stuff is coming I promise, but in the meantime, I made your fave Mars boy cry...so there's that.  
> Also, the Holt siblings.


	8. Asking For A Friend

Keith woke up the next morning in the new room, disoriented for a moment before he remembered. Between the move, his miniature breakdown, and the realization that the only way to get what he wanted would be to leave Altea, the day before had been eventful. However, he’d made an important choice, and now that he’d thought about it for the rest of the day and slept on it, it was anything but impulsive. Wasn’t it?

An aide brought him breakfast and Coran came to check in on him, staying a while to watch a movie with him and make sure he was not in tantrum territory again. When Coran finally left, Keith checked the time—there was still a while before noon, when he’d met Katie in the atrium yesterday, but there was a good enough chance that she’d be there. This time, the trip down the stairs was easier and there was less mournful drag to his step. Sure, the chance of succeeding in his escape was low, not to mention he had no idea how to even go about escaping, but it didn’t do much to lower his morale as he made his way to the first floor.

Katie wasn’t there when he arrived in the atrium, but Keith stepped through the glass door anyway, putting on his dark glasses and shuffling over to the bench where they’d perched the day before. He could only hope she made a habit of waiting for Matt in the atrium, could only hope that she was having lunch with him again today and not her parents. Maybe she wasn’t even going to be at Altea at all today—surely she didn’t want to spend every day there. Keith fidgeted in his seat, impatient and anxious and a little bit doubtful. Could this be a sign that he shouldn’t be doing this? Shouldn’t even be thinking about it?

Yes, it was what he wanted. But how would Coran feel? Shiro? Would his disappearance feel like betrayal, or dismissal of everything they’d done for him? He didn’t want to be a runaway, to leave it all behind, but the fact of the matter was that they were the only people he cared about here, and the only people who really knew and cared about him. This was the only way to have _more_.  The only way to see the world, to be normal, to find his father, to meet Lance.

The decision to leave Altea had nothing to do with Lance, but somehow, as he’d played it out in his imagination, Keith had always ended up in Arizona. He always ended up with Lance, as if there was nowhere else to go.

“Hey, space kid.”

Keith lifted his head to see Katie, entering through the same doors he had. As she walked along the path, she stepped into beams of blue light and was lit by the color periodically until she reached his side. Keith forced a small smile onto his face as Katie sat down on the bench beside him.

Before he talked himself out of it—which wouldn’t be a very Keith thing to do, and he regretted giving himself so much time to think about it because the more he did, the less nerve he seemed to have—he began, “So you know a lot about how Altea works.”

“Yeah,” she said, taking her tablet out and letting her bag fall on the ground. “I’m here all the time. Almost every day in the summer.”

“Okay, so um. Hypothetically, do you think…I mean, do you know how someone could…I don’t know. Leave?” he asked. “I mean, someone who is not technically authorized to leave.”

“Lemme guess, you’re asking for a friend,” she said, a hint of amusement in her voice. Keith shook his head, frustration threatening to take over. Keith tried to school his expression, trying not to jump to conclusions and assume she thought he wasn’t serious.

“No, I’m asking for me,” he said. “Who else would I be asking for?”

“Duh,” said Katie. “The way you worded it was like you didn’t want to tell me directly that you want to escape. The whole ‘asking for a friend’ thing is what people say when they don’t want to admit the advice is for them. Sorry, you haven’t dug too far into internet culture, have you? Forget it. What do you need?”

“Oh. I think maybe I have seen that before. Sorry,” Keith squirmed in his seat. “Anyway, I need, um, a way out. And for you to not tell anyone.”

“Obviously.” Katie fiddled around with her tablet, tapping and dragging things across the screen for a moment, pausing to think a few times, before turning it towards him. Keith peered at the screen, dim through his sunglasses, to see a carefully planned route through the Altea campus with notes attached and a diagram of a small pyramid-shaped robot.

“What? Did you…? That quickly?”

“I know a lot about how Altea works,” Katie said with a shrug. “Also, I may have thought about various scenarios like this before, for the hell of it. Plus you obviously hate it here, so I may have tweaked this plan more recently…”

“You’re a fucking genius,” said Keith, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Thanks. Anyway, you can’t just walk out of medical and then walk out of the gates, of course. You’d have to have some sort of disguise, so you didn’t draw attention in your little scrubby outfit,” she gestured to the clothes Keith had been given upon arrival. “Do you have anything else?”

“Yeah, they just…want me to wear this.”

“Exactly! It identifies you as a patient just as much as this bracelet does,” Katie exclaimed, beginning to get enthusiastic about her plan. “Additionally, there are cameras everywhere, and for the medical complex you need an ID badge or to talk to reception before you can leave. The gates are like that too—they don’t want rebellious astronauts or kids from the tour groups to leave without permission. You also have to time your escape carefully so no one knows you’re missing until you’re already long gone.”

“How am I supposed to do all of that?” Keith asked, intimidated by Katie’s list of obstacles. Maybe this was less likely than he thought. Not only did the plan seem complicated and/or harebrained, but he was unsure if he should really trust her. She was so young, and what if it didn’t work? What if he couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t tell someone?

“With my help!” she replied. She gestured to the gestured to the machine blueprint included in the plan. “This is Rover. I made him for a robotics fair last year and have updated him since. He can do pretty much everything you’ll need to get out of here undetected.”

“Why would you help me? Without even hesitating like that?” he asked. “What’s in it for you?”

“Because I like you. You’re weird. And also kinda sad…I don’t like when people are sad and I never know how to fix it. Not with what I’m good at, which is this stuff. But I can help you with computers and robots and then…you’ll get the hell out of here and be much less sad,” she said, redirecting her eyes so that they were focused on the screen and not on him. “Plus, it’s kinda fun.”

“Oh, okay,” Keith said, willing to accept that. However, he needed to know just how crazy her pitch was before he went through with it; the last time he’d tried to sneak around with little planning, he’d been caught. This time, the consequences were greater and Keith didn’t know Altea or Earth the way he’d known East Texas. There was no room for impulsiveness and no room for uncertainty. “So, um. What’s the plan, exactly?”

So she told him, in the time before Matt arrived, pulling up maps of the medical building and short video demonstrations of what Rover was capable of. Keith followed along carefully, pleasantly surprised at how well thought out her ideas were. Katie seemed to think of everything—the only holes in her plan were easily filled by information that Keith had: where his room was, when the nurses brought him meals or checked on him, when Coran would most likely swing by for his morning visit.

“Time to feed the pigeons!” Matt called when he waltzed into the atrium, finding Keith and Katie huddled together with their eyes intently trained on the screen of her tablet. “Hey, Keith. What’s going on, man?”

Katie casually locked the tablet so the screen went black and smiled. Keith was amazed by her seamless transition and her impressive ability to lie. 

“I was showing Keith Club Voltron,” she said.

“We were playing _Save the Balmera_ ,” Keith added, and to Katie’s credit, she didn’t even look surprised that he’d been able to lend credibility to the lie. She just nodded, smiling at him and Matt in turn. “Well, have a good lunch.”

“We will,” said Katie, sweeping her bag up off the ground. “See you tomorrow!”

 ****

Keith sat precariously at the edge of his bed, his leg bouncing up and down as Coran discussed how things were looking up, how his test results were looking good, how Keith was being very patient and it would all be worth it in the end.

Keith heard him rambling but wasn’t really listening, instead glancing at the clock and counting the minutes until Katie would be in his hallway, carrying a backpack full of crap instead of her usual messenger bag. Hopefully, Coran wouldn’t still be here, and if he was Keith hoped they could improvise.

Katie had been hesitant to go through with the plan so soon, and Keith understood that, but he had to leave before Altea’s physicians found the inevitable reason to send him back to Mars. She’d agreed to carry it out the very next day, provided that they kept an open line of communication and he followed her instructions through to the very end, when—universe willing—he would already be on a Greyhound line headed west before anyone realized he’d gone. There wasn’t time for running through everything multiple times, or memorizing the Altea campus flawlessly, so he had to make sure he listened to her.

It was almost time for Katie to “visit” Keith in his room, where the first stages of the plan would take place, where it was absolutely necessary that they be unsupervised and uninterrupted.

“Coran,” said Keith, and the man stopped turning in the chair to look at him. “Coran, I’d like to get some reading done, if you don’t mind. I want to finish my book before…well, before whatever is going to happen…”

“Oh, fantastic,” Coran said exuberantly, rising to his feet with more pep than he had been able to manage a few days ago. He was quickly readjusting to life on Earth, apparently, where Keith still felt very heavy and found it difficult to walk in a way that wasn’t noticeably…different. “I wish you luck in your literary adventures, Keith. And I hope you’ll stay optimistic, my boy. Everything will—”

“Everything will be okay,” Keith interrupted. That’s what Shiro had said to him when he popped in before leaving work the day before, and the day before that, and Coran repeated it like a mantra; _everything will be okay, everything will be okay_. Keith didn’t take comfort in it at all and it had lost all meaning, but he appreciated that Coran was trying. He offered a small smile, and Coran brushed a hand against his shoulder on his way to the door. “I know, Coran. Thank you.”

Coran left, and Keith’s smile fell off of his face at once, abandoned in favor of his determination. So far, he had managed to mask his intentions to escape behind his actual, honest frustration and nervousness. Coran and Shiro knew him, knew how much he hated being here and how afraid he was that the only way he’d be leaving would be on a spaceship, and so they dug no further. Additionally, there hadn’t been much time between the conception of the plan and its rapidly approaching start time.

Keith heard a knock on the door and released his death grip on the edge of his mattress so he could get up to answer it. As soon as the door was cracked open, Katie was pushing her way inside and checking the hallway for witnesses before shoving it closed behind her. She was a flurry of movement, quickly hauling her backpack to Keith’s bed and unloading its contents on the blanket. He watched her from where he still stood near the door.

“Why aren’t you changed? You can’t wear that,” she said without looking up from where she was unwrapping a bundle of cloth to reveal her pyramid shaped robot. She tossed the cloth in his direction, but Keith was too slow to catch it and it fell to the floor, revealing its true shape: a greasy blue t-shirt. “Put that on.”

Keith swiped an extra blanket from the bed and awkwardly wrapped it around himself in the far corner of the room, hiding as he changed into his own jeans and the shirt that Katie had given him. It was baggy and dirty, and Keith felt odd wearing it. Katie still hadn’t looked away from what was quickly becoming a workstation, as she was tapping away at her tablet as Rover powered up.

“Does it move by itself?” Keith asked, thinking of the ambulatory system that RRED had; massive oblong wheels with rotating treads.

“Not yet. He’s just very good at relaying signals and messages,” she lifted Rover from the bed, and it made a few beeping sounds in response. She pointed to the glowing center of one side of the pyramid. “This is a camera, but we won’t really need that. He’s mostly just tagging along with you so I know where you are, and he’ll be looping the footage of all the cameras you pass so you’re not spotted until we want you to be, once you’re out of the med complex. If you needed to unlock a safe or crack a code, he’d be useful for that too. He also has some laser capabilities that I’m still working on some settings for.”

She motioned for Keith to put his hand out, and when he did, Katie set the machine in his open palm. It was surprisingly lightweight for its size, which was smaller than Keith had thought it would be but still big enough to be…cumbersome. It beeped at him, and Keith frowned.

“That’s the responsiveness programming,” Katie added. “He knows when he’s being held and talked to and stuff. Makes a good listener.”

This, too, made him think of RRED. There were a lot of things on East Texas that Keith had hated, but RRED had always been a good companion. He put the small pyramid down, awash with a confusing feeling that couldn’t be homesickness, because he’d hated living on Mars, but felt almost like it.

Katie began running through the plan again as she hacked into whatever systems she was hacking into, while Keith repacked her bag with his own belongings. He was pretty sure he’d run through it enough times in his head, and all his questions had been answered when she’d relayed it to him the first time, so he tuned out a bit as she talked. Instead, he watched Rover blink and beep as it faced Katie, and she responded as if they were having a conversation.

“What, is that some kind of code you can understand? The beeping, I mean,” said Keith.

“It’s Morse.”  

“Oh. And you have Morse code memorized?” he asked. She looked at him as if not having memorized Morse code was the abnormal thing. Maybe it was—Keith surely didn’t know, having been born on Mars and all. His education had been mostly independent study; he’d learned about space travel and world history and a lot of cool animal facts and he’d read _The Great Gatsby_ but he’d never realized that Morse code would be something he’d need, the technology seemed so archaic.

“You need to pin your hair up so it all fits under the hat,” she said, dropping the subject at once. She gestured to the Altea baseball cap that she’d brought him—he’d seen Shiro wearing a similar one in photos and once on video chat. “Or we can cut it here and now. As long as you don’t match your description, just in case someone figures out you’re gone before you’re really gone.”

Keith rather liked his hair the way it was, but cutting it would have perks. He wasn’t sure if he trusted Katie with it, though—Coran had always been the one to cut his hair, and he was good at it, until Keith had stopped letting him. Keith figured Katie didn’t care so much about what his hair looked like, and normally he wouldn’t either, but today he was horrified by the idea of taking scissors to his hair. He couldn’t trust Katie to do a good job, nor did they really have the time to make it look right, and he couldn’t meet Lance with a sloppy looking haircut.

“No, no. I can pin it up, it’s fine.”

“Mmmmkay,” Katie said, returning to what she was doing on her tablet. For a while they remained in silence, Katie finishing what she was doing and Keith pinning chunks of his hair to the back of his head with the pins that she’d brought.

When he had finished the job and hidden it all under the hat, Keith cleared his throat to get her attention.

“Looking good,” she said. “You look like you belong or whatever. Which reminds me—” she shuffled through some of the things on the bed, finding a sticky gauze pad bandage, “there’s more to your disguise.”

Katie got up from where she was kneeling beside the bed and peeled off the adhesive backing. She sprung up on her tiptoes for a moment to slap the bandage on Keith’s cheek.

“Official story: you nicked yourself during work. If anyone asks, and no one will ask for more than that. Happens all the time when you’re building stuff.”

“Right, because I’m an engineer,” said Keith. He hoped he was able to say it more convincingly when it mattered. “And that’s why my shirt is so dirty?”

“Yeah,” said Katie. “And because I took it from Matt’s dirty pile.”

Keith made a face. He’d already been worried about meeting Lance with bad hair in a dirty shirt, but now there was a chance he’d smell, too. Keith had planned on leaving most of his clothes behind, but with this in mind—and the fact that Lance might think he looked better in a different color like red or gray—he rolled up a couple more of his shirts to place in the bag.

“Why are Matt’s clothes so dirty? I thought he was some kind of doctor.”

“No, he’s a researcher, specifically in how to use machines and robotics in medicine,” she explained. “His focus has always been prosthetics, and he built the arm Shiro uses now. He and Shiro went to school together and bonded because they’re both huge nerds. I guess since the accident Matt had been promising to build him a sick new arm and he delivered.”

“Oh. Well, it’s a good arm.”

Katie laughed and picked up Rover and her laminated access badge, one in each hand, holding both of them out to him.

“You’re so weird. Here, put him in your bag,” she said. Keith did, wrapping Rover in his red shirt and tucking him between the others. Katie nodded approvingly. “And obviously, you know what to do with my badge.”

“Right.”

“Put your arm out,” she said, now wielding scissors. Keith complied and felt the cold blade slide between his skin and the ID bracelet with the easily trackable, easily identifiable chip inside. Katie had to open and close the scissors around the plastic a couple of times before it fell free, and she kicked it under the bed where it would stay. After it was out of sight, Katie handed him the dark sunglasses he’d been given when he’d landed on Earth, and he put them on. “That’s it. Now you’re completely undercover.”

“Hopefully no one who actually knows me will see me,” Keith said. He’d already packed his clothes and Rover, so all Keith had left to pack was his mother’s action figure—which, according to Shiro, had been custom made to look like her in superhero garb—the baggie full of prepaid visa cards Katie had taken from her parents’ holiday stash and money he’d found with his mother’s things on East Texas, and the space shuttle pendant. He zipped the backpack closed and lifted it, pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t very heavy.

Katie quickly packed all of her things in the messenger bag she’d brought, folded up inside the backpack, and gave Keith one last look.

“This plan is a masterpiece,” she said. “Don’t fuck up. Also, good luck.”

“Thank you. Really,” Keith said, unable to express how grateful he was. Even now, before he’d even stepped outside, he felt liberated. He was under the radar, without hospital clothes or the ID band, and it was a stepping stone to something bigger. There was a world out there that he wanted desperately to know, and Katie had wedged open that door for him so it wouldn’t keep slamming shut. “This is so much. Too much.”

“Shut up, it was fun,” she said, pushing open the door and looking around before stepping out into the hallway. “I’ll send you a signal through Rover when I get to the atrium. Good luck.”

The door closed behind her, and Keith waited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rover is the true star of this chapter.   
> And it's really long and the next one will probably be even longer help.   
> This will be like 50 chapters by the time I'm done wtf??? Just kidding but still. Help.


	9. A List of Overwhelming Things

The lobby of the med center was vast, with high ceilings like the atrium, but with only one wall of windows where the sun shone in and bounced off of the silver sculptures of moons and planets that dangled above. Some of these windows on the bottom of the window-wall were not windows at all but sliding glass doors; every few minutes, someone would pass through them, holding a badge up to the white rectangles fixed to the sides of each door to grant them access to the wide world outside.

The lobby was mostly unpeopled. A couple of men sat together on the curved bench-like seat along one wall, casually chatting, and the few people that did pass by gave Keith a wide berth. He must’ve looked strange, standing at the mouth of the wide room, clutching his backpack straps, having not moved for several minutes. He was paralyzed, somehow, by some kind of cold fear that he didn’t understand. He could almost feel Katie watching him on camera, willing him to move, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

This was it. This was the moment where everything started to change, and Keith was frozen in place.

He thought about going back to his room and subsequently going back to Mars. He thought about the alternative, where he stepped out of those doors, the best friend he’d ever had and the father he’d never known waiting on the other side.

“Excuse me, hon, are you all right?”

Keith’s head turned abruptly towards the voice, which belonged to the receptionist at the front desk. She was standing, leaning slightly over the desk to call out to him, her ID lanyard and silvery necklace clicking against the marble surface. Keith managed a nod. Her necklace reminded him of his mother’s spaceship pendant, which he’d stowed away in his bag but which he ached to hold onto.

“Yeah,” he croaked. And then repeated. “Yeah, just trying to remember if I left anything in the exam room.”

He swung his backpack down to the floor and knelt beside it, plunging one hand into its depths until his fingers found the shape of the space shuttle. He untangled it from his clothes and withdrew it from the bag, smiling at the receptionist when he pulled it out, brandishing it triumphantly as if he’d found something misplaced.

He made himself zip the bag back up, put the necklace on, and shuffle towards the desk.

“It’s lucky,” he said to the receptionist. With one hand he clutched his mother’s necklace, and with the other he gestured to the bandage on his cheek. “Might’ve gotten worse than a scratch if not for this little thing.”

How was he doing this? Lying so smoothly? It was bizarre, but Keith smiled through his bewilderment.

“That’s wonderful. We could all use a little luck,” the woman said, deepening the smile lines around her eyes. “Well you have a nice day, sweetheart.”

“You too,” the false Keith said cheerfully, moving towards the door. He held Katie’s badge up to the scanner and breathed a soft, relieved sigh when it beeped and shone green. The door whooshed open, and Keith stepped into the sun.

Crossing the campus was a swift endeavor. He knew where he was going, and so did his character. To Development, where he left Katie’s badge on the ground near the door before doubling back and trekking all the way to the security office. Keith’s sensitive eyes hated him for ducking in and out of the sunlight so often, and all of this running around while maintaining a normal gait was difficult—he hadn’t completely gotten used to feeling so heavy—but the adrenaline had kicked in, attacking his fear and pain and leaving Keith feeling giddy as he sauntered up to the security building’s front desk.

“Excuse me, I lost my badge somewhere, where do I go to get clearance to go home? I might also need a new badge,” said Keith, leaning on the desk and fiddling around with his hands. The young man in the blue and white security uniform smiled pleasantly.

“There’s a small office, right across from the bathroom,” the guard said, pointing to his left. “My guy Ira can hook you up with a temporary badge and the paperwork for a new one, which you can take home with you.”

“Okay, thank you,” Keith smiled and followed the guard’s instructions, repeating his dilemma to Ira in the clearance office, who didn’t look too hard at him because he was on the phone arguing with Katie, who was pretending to be an administrator at a school who wanted to arrange a last-minute trip to Altea for the following day. Before Keith was even done reiterating his lie, the man was digging through his filing cabinet and a drawer of temporary badges.

“No, ma’am, you’ll have to find another date, we already have the maximum number of tours running tomorrow—here, kid, print your name and number on the badge, bring the papers back in as soon as possible, have a nice day—no, the following day is Saturday, ma’am.”

“Thank you!” Keith said, scribbling out his fake name and the number Katie had given him and taking the paperwork. Exhilaration coursed through him as he turned and left, a false identity that meant freedom clutched in his hands as he waved goodbye to the guard at the door and to Altea and to being trapped.

He was so giddy as he stumbled out the doors of the security office that he almost neglected to watch his surroundings, almost crossed directly into the path of a very disheveled Takashi Shirogane. Keith froze in place, obscured by his hat and glasses and the shade of the security office, but if Shiro turned his head and really looked at him? It would all be over.

He seemed distracted. Tired. Maybe even upset about something. Keith wondered if his absence had already been discovered, and Shiro was already out looking for him, distraught and worried. He wondered if Shiro had gotten any sleep the night before. He wondered if Shiro would be angry at him, or just hurt.

But Shiro didn’t look. He didn’t even spare a glance in Keith’s direction as he presumably made his way to his office in Command.

Keith practically ran to the exit of the compound, showed his badge, and stepped outside the gates.

 ****

Keith decided very early on that he did not like buses. There were rows of people he didn’t know, talking and snoring and smelling like they had never seen a bar of soap in their lives. Every time someone looked at him, he worried they had seen some kind of news report or wanted poster with his face, and that they next chance they had they’d be calling the Altea Company to turn him in.

This particular bus ride was about sixteen hours, not including the stops that they made at rest stops and bus stations along the way. Keith slept fitfully some of the time, and stared out at the road for the rest. The streaks of light and color in the dark that were cars, the glow of the lamps posed over the highways, the white globe of the moon in the sky. The only other time he’d travelled on Earth was when he’d arrived during the day; he thought maybe he liked nighttime travel better. Something about the lights of cities in the distance and the glow of gas station signs and the glimpses of yawns through tinted drivers’ side windows made it all more Earth, more human, more like everything Keith had been missing.

He watched the sun rise for the first time and felt like maybe he would cry. Not just for the beauty of it, but for what it meant. Everything was new: the day, the place, Keith’s life.

It was almost nine in the morning when the bus dropped him off in the town Lance was from, a few miles from Phoenix. It had only come up a few times in conversation, but Keith remembered—Lance was born in Cuba, but had moved to Garrison, Arizona when he was eleven. He had told Keith that sometimes he missed his old home, especially the ocean, but now that almost all of his family was in the States, it felt more like a place he could belong.

Keith wasn’t sure what it was to even feel like he _could_ belong.

Keith spent the morning wandering, watching shops open for the day and eventually stumbling upon a playground still covered in the morning’s dew. There was an elaborate system of climbing structures, slides, and bridges, and Keith felt something akin to longing when he looked at it. He’d never gotten to play on a playground, but somehow he felt nostalgic for it anyway.

There were swings a few yards away from the play structure. When he was small, Keith had made himself a swing with the help of one of the scientists; he had been able to have that quintessential childhood experience, at least. He’d outgrown and broken and repurposed that old swing, but he’d liked it while it lasted, and he missed it. 

He took off his backpack and sat down on the farthest swing, opening the big zipper pocket and digging out the prepaid phone he’d bought before getting on the bus. He sent Katie a text message to let her know he’d arrived. He didn’t know anyone else to contact. He wished he’d gotten Lance’s number, even if he had never been able to use it until now.

Keith didn’t know how long he sat there, reading one of the books he’d packed, but his quiet solitude was interrupted eventually. A car pulled up to the curb, and two children leapt out of it, running to the playground at full speed before their driver had even gotten out.

Keith thought maybe it was about time he left, to look for an internet café or library where he could log onto Club Voltron. He didn’t really want to be spotted, least of all by someone’s parent who might pay attention to missing persons ads. On top of that, Keith was completely mystified and thrown off his game by children, considering the only kid he’d ever known had been himself.

He shoved his things in his bag, fully intending to retreat by the time the children’s supervision showed up.

“Hey, wait!”

Keith turned, even though it wasn’t meant for him.

“You know you’re supposed to wait!” the voice called out again, and the children paused at the edge of the play structure, though Keith could tell they’d rather just start playing. He watched as a young man rounded the car, carrying an infant car seat, grinning beneath the massive sunglasses that obscured most of his face. “Aight, go ahead. You now have supervision.”

Keith felt frozen in place again. He wondered if this happened to people who weren’t on the run on planets they’d never been to before.

He wasn’t sure, but he thought that maybe…there was something about this guy that was all too familiar…

“Tio Lance, watch this!” the girl hollered from her perch atop the play structure, and both the young man and Keith turned to watch as she slid down the fireman’s pole.

The boy quickly tried to best her, attempting to climb up the pole. Keith tuned their bickering out, trying to discern whether Lance was a more common name than he thought. But Lance was an uncle, and he’d said he watched his niece and nephews a lot, and the shape of his face and shoulders were right.

Then he laughed, and all Keith’s uncertainty was gone.

Keith got up from the swing and hovered where he was for a moment, wondering if there was any way to approach Lance that wouldn’t seem creepy. He wasn’t completely socially obtuse, having learned from television and scientists how to behave—to say please, to say thank you, that smiling made people think you were nice, that scowling made people think you were not nice, and at least some grasp of how not to act like a total stalker. Not that he was having much luck, considering he’d already have to explain that he came to this town specifically for Lance, and just happened to be at the same park he took his niece and nephew to.

He made sure to stay away from the kids, at least, giving the play structure a wide birth as he walked up to the bench, and standing on the side that did not have a baby carrier with a snoozing infant inside.

“Uh, hey man,” said Lance, flipping up his sunglasses. Keith was taken aback by the brightness of his eyes, brighter than ever before.

“Uh,” Keith parroted. “Hey. Um. Lance?”

“Yeah? Sorry, bud, I can’t place you,” said Lance peering curiously up into Keith’s face. He looked cautious, but not completely freaked out. “It’s probably the glasses. Did you go to school with me?”

“No, um. It’s Keith.”

“Keith?”

He was staring. Why was Lance staring at him like that? Had it been so long since Keith had checked in that Lance didn’t remember him?

Then, Lance was speaking, and for once the words he said matched the pace of his mouth.

“Keith? My Keith? Martian-King, kicks my ass in every piloting game, hermit baby Keith?” Lance stood up, hands on his hips, sizing Keith up as he went on. “It’s been too long, man, too long. I thought…why did I think you’d be taller? Dude, wait, what about your bones? And aren’t you allergic to like, everything? I know you mentioned something about experimental treatments, but I didn’t think your parents would let you go so soon.”

“Um. I did have a lot of rehab. I’m okay, though,” Keith said. “Sorry for…disappearing.”

“You warned me, it’s okay,” Lance said, his grin drooping just a bit. “I missed you, though. Like, more than I probably should have.”

“Oh,” Keith said, a little gasp escaping him.

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“I’m not, I just…” Keith shrugged. “I missed you, too. I was going to message you later, since I’m in town and all. But then you just showed up, so…I hope this wasn’t creepy. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No, no, not really,” Lance shook his head. “We’re friends. Internet friends meet all the time—we just didn’t really prearrange it this time.”

Lance lifted a hand to rake his fingers through his hair. Keith wondered if his locks were as soft as they looked, if he’d ever get a chance to playfully ruffle Lance’s hair, or if his bangs got longer, to brush it back from his face, or—

“Hey, is it okay to touch you?”

Keith was startled out of his moment of obsessing over Lance’s hair. “Huh?”

“I wanna hug you, man. Is touching okay?” Lance said. “I don’t know if you’re…uh…sensitive to touch or shouldn’t be squeezed or anything. Also, ya know, some people don’t like to be touched at all, just as a preference thing or a sensory thing or…”

Keith dropped his backpack on the ground and latched onto Lance, a hand curling over his warm, bare shoulder and reeling him in. Keith’s head fit against Lance’s other shoulder, and the arm that wasn’t trapped awkwardly between them was free to loop around Lance’s middle.

Lance wrapped both of his long arms around Keith and held him so tightly, a stronger and gentler embrace than he’d ever had, than he’d ever thought he’d have. He felt grounded, secure, oblivious to the cramp in his hand and arm because everything else was so warm and pleasant and worth every step he’d taken to get there. Lance smelled like soap and his body shook a little as he laughed and pressed his cheek against Keith’s head and Keith knew he’d been held before, knew he’d been lovingly toted around while he was small, but this? This was foreign. This was exhilarating and comforting at the same time.

Keith felt his eyes stinging a little, but blinked rapidly and tried not to sniffle. Lance would feel it if he started crying and would want to know what was wrong. Keith didn’t know how to explain, and he didn’t know if anything was wrong. He just felt so much and didn’t understand why.

“Tio!”

The shout startled Lance into alertness. He pulled away, his movement quick and jerky. Keith felt suddenly agitated, like the action of Lance removing himself had torn away part of Keith. Now that he wasn’t being touched and held, he felt like an open wound.

“Who’s that?” demanded the little girl, standing at the edge of the playground with her hands on her hips.

“Probably Tio’s boyfriend,” said the boy from the top of the slide. He slid down and sat at the end of it, a smug look on his face.

Keith wanted to hide behind the bench.

“No, not really,” said Lance. “Just an old friend I haven’t seen in a while. This is Keith. Keith, this is Rico, and Eva, and the little guy is Gabriel.”

At this, Lance turned back to the baby, drawing back the shade on the carrier a little in order to check on him. Keith wanted to sit down—he was tired, and now on edge and shaky, which was frustrating and confusing—but didn’t know where. He wasn’t sure if Lance wanted to share the bench with him _and_ the baby.

“Oooooh. That’s Keith? The one you talk to Hunk about all the time?” asked Rico. Lance looked up from the baby, and his sunglasses fell back down on his face, but not before Keith caught sight of the wide-eyed look on his face. The children started laughing. Keith might’ve laughed, too, if he wasn’t so overwhelmed.

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he’s eight,” said Lance, pushing the glasses up again. “Hey, what’s the matter?”

Keith shook his head, unable to verbalize what was going on in his head. Instead, he sat on the ground next to Lance’s bench and curled into himself, his forehead resting on his bent knees. Lance sunk down beside him.

“It’s okay, dude,” he was saying, a hand on Keith’s shoulder and then his neck, a gentle and grounding touch. “It’s okay. What can I do?”

Keith mumbled and shifted closer to him, feeling Lance wrap an arm around his shoulders and hold him against his body. Being touched again made him feel better—he realized now that on top of being overstimulated with new experiences, the jarring switch from being embraced to feeling cut open had thrown him. Now, he _slowly_ shifted from being held to sitting up on his own, next to Lance instead of draped across him.

“Sorry,” said Keith. “Everything is just…so much.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Lance said, smiling warmly. “You’ve never really been outside before, right? And I guess you’re kind of…well, if you don’t mind me saying, you’re kind of touch-starved.”

“That sounds about right.”

Lance leaned his head back against the bench. His arms were draped over his knees, and one hand was fiddling with a blade of grass. Keith added to the list of things that overwhelmed him: Lance himself. He didn’t want to think too much about why, not right now, when everything was just feeling simple and good again.

“Do you, uh, have to be anywhere or anything?” asked Lance. Keith wasn’t sure what he meant; his confusion must have shown, because Lance clarified. “I mean, do you have time to come over. For like, food.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah.” Keith realized that he hadn’t really eaten or slept since leaving Altea. “I could definitely go for some food.”

“And probably a nap,” said Lance.

“Yeah,” Keith said. “Probably.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keith's List of Overwhelming Things:   
> 1\. Freedom and all the things it means  
> 2\. The way the sky looks, all the time  
> 3\. Adrenaline rushes  
> 4\. Post-adrenaline rush crashes   
> 5\. Buses   
> 6\. Children  
> 7\. Hugs  
> 8\. Lance(?)
> 
> okay also i'm posting this FINALLY because i'm on break and I just finished this chapter. It went places I didn't expect: so have a touch-starved baby and a good boy who comforts him  
> also I think we all need some Keith content right now in the wake of the new season.


	10. Getting Warmer

Lance drummed his hands on the steering wheel as he waited at the last light before his house. In the backseat, Gabe was gurgling, Eva was quietly playing on her kiddy tablet, and Rico was interrogating Keith. Keith, who was here, in the front seat of his family minivan with insanely big sunglasses and a phone model that still had a keyboard slider. He was texting somebody, his thumbs slow and hesitant on the keys. His hair was sticking up in different directions and Lance wanted to touch it again, even though he knew logically that it would feel the same as it had before.

“Why is your shirt so dirty?” asked Rico, kicking at Lance’s seat.

Keith looked up from his text and looked over his shoulder, and then took a beat to register the question. He tugged the collar of his shirt self-consciously, and Lance felt torn between being protective of Keith and understanding of Rico’s curiosity. After all, Lance had loads of questions too, but he had a shred more patience and could save them for when they got home.

“I didn’t have time to change?” Keith offered. “I can put something else on when we get there, to be more presentable.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Lance, “Mamá will go nuts and have you strip in the kitchen if she sees that, no joke. And then she’ll make _me_ do _your_ laundry. Not that there’s something wrong with that! The color is nice, it’s just…is that like, grease or something?”

“Yeah. Uh,” Keith looked down at himself, turning a little red. Lance hoped he wasn’t making him feel bad. Why did he have to say anything? Why couldn’t he just be quiet about it? “I borrowed this from a…mechanic. Yeah, Matt. He’s a mechanic.”

Why did Keith borrow a dirty shirt from some guy named Matt? Lance shook off the impulse to ask as he turned down his street, and Keith fell silent as they approached the house. Lance parked in the driveway, watching as his friend took in the house before him.

“It’s blue,” said Keith softly. As if he hadn’t known that houses could be blue. Lance shrugged, pocketing the keys and sliding out of the car. Keith followed his lead, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and wandering into the front yard. Lance stopped watching him in favor of unloading all of the kids. Keith was still standing in the same spot, staring up at the house in some kind of awe, when Lance approached with Gabe’s carrier in hand.

The kids had already gone off into the yard, where Lance’s mother was probably gardening out back. He could hear her voice carry on the breeze as she greeted them, and theirs as they babbled on about their time at the park. Inevitably, they would tell her about Keith, which meant there was only a small window of time before she hunted them down.

“We should probably go in,” said Lance, poking Keith in the cheek as he passed.

“Hey!”

There was that spark that he’d known was in there somewhere. Lance laughed, glad to see that Keith was feeling better after what went down in the park. He continued up to the porch, wrestling the door open and maneuvering himself and the car seat through the opening. In the entryway, he set Gabe down and turned in time to see Keith come in and carefully close the door behind him.

Keith was different than he’d thought. Lance had expected more burning forests than gentle, warming flame. Online Keith had always had an angry streak, an attitude, a competitive spirit. Lance figured that finally getting out of the house had assuaged some of the anger, and being thrown into an entirely foreign environment had made him a little more cautious.

He supposed no one was exactly as you expected them to be, at least not all the time. He kind of liked this softer side of Keith, anyway.

“There’s a bathroom right around the corner, behind the stairs,” Lance said, kneeling down in front of the baby carrier. “If you want to change.”

“Thanks,” said Keith, trudging that way. Lance watched the door close down the hall and then resumed unfastening the buckles, scooping the baby up into his arms and chuckling when he grabbed a tiny fistful of Lance’s hair. He grabbed at Lance’s glasses, too, as he was deposited gently into his bouncy walker thing with all the brightly colored things to play with.

“There you go, bud,” Lance said, rescuing his glasses and kissing Gabe’s head.

“Lance, come help me in the kitchen!” Mamá called from the other side of the house. Lance pet the baby’s soft hair for just another moment before getting up to answer the call. He passed the bathroom door and saw the glow of the light underneath; Keith was still holed up there, and Lance hoped he stayed put for just a little while.

His mother was standing at the sink, shedding her gardening gloves and washing her hands. Lance didn’t see any kind of task for him to help with, but he joined her anyway, leaning back and bracing his hands on the edge of the countertop. Mamá turned off the water, shook her hands out, and turned to him expectantly. She had a _look_ , a special kind of look, and Lance squirmed under her gaze.

“Which friend did you bring home?” she asked.

“Keith. I’ve mentioned him,” Lance lifted one hand to scratch the back of his head. “He’s the one I video chat? From online. I know you probably think that means I don’t really _know_ him, but...he’s good, okay?”

“I thought he couldn’t leave the house?” she asked. She carried her gloves over to the back door and placed them on her little pile of gardening things in the corner. Lance was surprised that she had listened when he talked about Keith, that she’d remembered.

“He’s doing some treatments that help. Anyway, he was in town looking at schools, I think? And we met up at the park,” Lance said. “Please, be nice. But not too nice. Don’t hug him without asking and don’t mention his parents. He’s new to…well I guess he’s new to people. I don’t want him to get freaked out, okay?”

“Okay,” said Mamá. “I will try.”

Keith didn’t emerge from the bathroom until Mamá had started the arduous task of cutting up mango and pineapple to feed the children. Lance snuck a piece of the pineapple, slipping it into his mouth just as Keith emerged in the doorway, peering in and looking nervous.

“Hey, buddy,” Lance said, greeting him with a smile. He crossed the room to meet Keith at the door, because he wasn’t sure Keith would come in without prompting. He threw his arm around Keith’s shoulders and swept him into the kitchen.

“Hi,” Keith shyly waved at Lance’s mother. She waved back with the knife in her hand. Lance sighed, rubbing a hand down his face in exasperation. Keith shuffled up to the kitchen island, apparently unfazed by the woman waving a blade around, and looked kind of longingly at the fruit. “Um, I’m Keith. I, uh. I can help with something, if you’d like?”

Mamá smiled, her eyebrows lifting just a little at Lance to indicate her wholehearted approval.

 ****

The TV was on, but Lance was barely paying attention to it. He also had his laptop open and had paused a game of _Escape From Beta Traz_ open on his screen, and there were a few unread messages on his phone that had been unread for at least the last five minutes. Lance wasn’t sure why he had so much going on—was it an attempt to distract himself, or a ruse meant to convince anyone who came down to the basement that he was doing something.

He wasn’t really doing anything but watching Keith sleep. Not at the moment, anyway. Since Mamá had stuffed Keith full of food and the two of them had retreated to the basement, Keith had been napping on the futon and Lance had been pretending not to behave like he was obsessed. He’d thought this thing had gone away; Keith had been off the map for months and Lance had been getting used to the absence, slowly but surely. He’d been forgetting to check Club Voltron incessantly in case Keith logged on, had almost stopped daydreaming about him, and spent less time missing him.

Now, here Keith was, a daydream come true. In Lance’s town, his house, his basement sanctuary. Keith’s webcam had not done him justice, except for his hair. His hair was actually as bad as it had looked online. He was a twitchy sleeper, kicking and mumbling the whole time, little wrinkles forming in his nose and forehead on occasion. Once, he flung his arm out and his hand was right there, right within reach, and Lance had wanted to trace the little lines in his palm and maybe kiss them, too.

“Gay,” he’d whispered to himself. Keith had whimpered and drawn his arm back in.

Upstairs, the doorbell rang and Lance was glad that the baby was not also taking a nap. He wondered absently who it was, and then wondered if Keith’s family knew where he was, and then wondered if Keith had even told them he was going to Arizona. Surely, with parents like his, he’d be expected to go to school near wherever they lived—somewhere in Texas. Lance didn’t remember where, or if he’d ever been told.

Footsteps on the stairs interrupted his musing, and Lance quickly turned to his computer and pressed play. He lost the game almost immediately.

“Dude, your mom is acting like you have a date down here,” said Hunk as he landed at the bottom of the stairs. Lance twisted around and made a motion with his hand that meant, wordlessly, shut up. Hunk still hadn’t stepped far enough into the room to see Keith passed out on the couch, so he just looked confused. “What? Do you?”

“No,” Lance hissed. “Get in here, but be quiet. He’s sleeping.”

Hunk shuffled further into the room, took one look at Keith’s sleeping form, and then did a double-take. He sucked in a surprised breath and plopped down in the beanbag chair next to Lance’s, eyes big and questioning.

“So, yeah. Keith’s here,” said Lance. “I think Mamá picked up on…whatever it is I’m feeling.”

“You mean your hardcore crush on him?” Hunk asked. He looked very proud of himself for pointing it out. Lance elbowed him gently.

“Stop, I don’t want him to wake up and hear you.”

“I guess his meds or whatever are working, huh?”

“Yeah,” Lance said. “I think all of it takes a lot out of him, though.”

Hunk nodded in understanding. He seemed to join Lance in watching Keith sleep for a moment, before starting to very carefully rummage through his bag to get his own computer out. Unlike Lance, he didn’t have a hard time keeping to the task he intended. He also switched off the TV, making the room a different sort of quiet.

“Hunk,” said Lance. This was more of a whisper than before. A soft, searching whisper in the near silence of the basement.  

“Yeah?”

“I really do like him,” he said. “I think more, now. He’s so…real. And here. And I missed him.”

Hunk nodded again. “I know.”

 ****

Keith woke up slowly, blinking at the ceiling tiles for a moment before trying to sit up. He was a little more achey than he’d been before; rather than feeling refreshed after his nap, he felt a little like he was waking up from the dead.

“Hey, look who’s up,” said a voice to his left. Keith turned as Lance moved his computer from his lap and crawled over to Keith’s side, leaving Hunk alone in the beanbags. He was wearing headphones and looked very focused on whatever he was doing. It didn’t seem like he’d noticed that Keith was awake. “A wild Hunk appeared while you were sleeping.”

“Yeah,” Keith croaked. Lance got up and settled onto the couch, forcing Keith to move his feet. “Uh, how long was I out?”

“Like, four hours? Three and a half?” Lance shrugged. He was so, so warm. Keith felt like he was sitting next to cozy hearth like in a movie or a recording of a fireplace you could play on your TV for hours. It wasn’t Lance’s actual body that was radiating the warmth, but the way he looked at Keith that made him feel all wonderful inside. “I could tell you needed it.”

“I did, yeah,” said Keith. “Thank you for suggesting it.”

“No prob. Hey, Hunk-o,” Lance said, grabbing the pillow Keith had kicked onto the floor and tossing it at Hunk. “Come say hello!”

Hunk flinched at the impact, but once he looked over his irritated expression dissolved into a wide grin. He hauled himself up and closed the space between them quickly, pausing and looking at Keith questioningly. Keith nodded, opening his arms so that he could be swept up in a tight, all encompassing hug. This was more comfortable and less desperate than the embrace he’d shared with Lance in the park—Hunk was squishier where Lance was bony, and Keith was not keyed up and clingy anymore.

“It’s so good to see you!” Hunk was saying as he pulled away, settling on the floor again. “You didn’t even tell us you were back from—well, back from whatever—and now you’re suddenly here!”

“Everything is kind of sudden for me, too,” Keith said, casting his eyes away. He reached for his phone where he’d left it on the end table. There were a slew of messages, all from Katie, of course.

He opened them and cold dread sunk into his bones.

**Pidgeon:** They’ve figured out you’re gone

**Pidgeon:** I don’t think they know I had anything to do with it. Not yet.

**Pidgeon:** Stuff’s crazy here. Are you okay?

**Pidgeon:** Keith??

**Pidgeon:** There’s an ominous meeting happening. I think they’re talking about where you’d go. I’m trying to hear as much as I can.

**Pidgeon:** Do they know about Lance?

**Pidgeon:** Keith, they know.

**Pidgeon:** They’re going to Arizona to get you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Help they're pining   
> I think this chapter got finished so quickly because I'm still riding the high of season 5. Anyway, I wasn't originally gonna throw Lance's POV in quite yet but it seemed like it would fit nicely.


	11. Grief and Anger Are Brothers

As soon as he’d gone to the cafeteria to get some fruit and to fill his thermos with coffee, Shiro returned to the med center. There was something he needed to talk to Keith about before he could start work for the day—the night before, he’d managed to get his father back on the phone, had weaseled some semblance of truth out of him, and had strong-armed him into buying a ticket to Houston. He’d be in town that afternoon.

“Meet him,” Shiro had insisted, his tone darker than he was comfortable with. His anger with his father was something he didn’t like to confront; it was ugly and complicated and made Shiro face a part of himself he didn’t want to see. “Dad, meet Keith. You owe him that much.”

Shirogane had agreed. Now, Shiro had to give Keith some kind of warning. The poor kid deserved to know what to expect, and what Shirogane was probably going to tell him. Shiro didn’t know for sure because his father talked in cryptic circles about Elle, and always had since she died. But he was almost positive that he knew the identity of Keith’s father, and that Shirogane would tell Keith today when he arrived.

There was a security guard at the desk, talking in hushed tones with the receptionist. She looked like she was going to cry, and he couldn’t tell if the guard was comforting or chastising her. Shiro crossed the lobby and tried not to worry too much about the scene. He paused to wait for the elevator, admiring the view of plants and flowers from the windows of the atrium. Inside, Katie Holt was sitting on her usual bench with her tablet on her lap, too engrossed to notice him and wave.

The elevator arrived, and Shiro walked inside. In his pocket, his phone was vibrating against his hip, but instead of giving in and checking it Shiro allowed himself an indulgent sip of coffee. He didn’t want to be stressed today, not when he was about to see Keith. Keith, who would pick up on it and think that it meant he had bad news. When really, his news was rather neutral.

The ride to the second floor was short, and the moment of peace did nothing to prepare him for what he discovered when he emerged from the elevator. Another member of security was waiting for him, standing at the atrium window. Through the windows around the corner, Shiro could see a cluster of people right around where Keith’s room was.

“Mr. Shirogane, good morning—”

“What happened?” Shiro didn’t wait for an answer before breaking into a run, dropping his thermos and messenger bag in the process. He faintly registered the clatter of metal on the floor and the guard’s cursing, but it was nothing compared to the pressing need to see Keith, to make sure he was okay.

If something had happened to Keith, if he had gotten hurt because he shouldn’t have been brought to Earth, Shiro would never forgive himself. His father’s words echoed in his head: _That boy could die on this planet._

“Shiro!” Allura called when she spotted him, but he didn’t stop to look at her, or at the crowd that was gathered near the entrance to Keith’s room. He didn’t want to see it on their faces before he saw for himself—

He skidded to a halt in front of Keith’s open door, panting. The room was empty.

Allura and Coran appeared at his side. Coran’s face was drawn and his eyes swollen. Shiro bit back the instinctive darkness, the anger that bubbled because of his fear and guilt. Instead of yelling, he calmly asked, “Where is he?”

“We don’t know.”

Shiro ventured cautiously into the room, taking in the rumpled bedsheets, the pile of Keith’s Altea-issued clothes discarded in the corner, the plastic ID bracelet that had been cut off and lay on the floor with the severed ends together as if it was trying to mend itself. This was worrying, puzzling, frustrating, but it was not the alternative that Shiro’s conscience and the voice of his father had practically forced him to imagine—he saw it now: rather than abandoned, the bed was occupied by a covered shape, the clothes folded on the desk never to be worn again, the bracelet still looped around a thin, cold wrist.

No. Shiro violently shoved the image away as he picked up Keith’s bracelet. Keith was alive, he was fine, he’d just _run away_. He could still come back, could still learn where he’d come from and find where he belonged.

“I’m calling a meeting,” said Shiro, standing again. “Everyone who was in charge of supervising him, everyone who talked to him, everyone who knew him on East Texas. If they’re in the country, bring them here.”

“Shiro, even if we find him...it has to be his choice to come back,” Allura reminded him. She was right—Keith had turned eighteen in October and was well on his way to nineteen now. They couldn’t force him to do anything, but that didn’t mean they weren’t going to look for him at all.

“I know,” said Shiro. “But his life is on the line either way.”

She nodded, already reaching for her phone to contact her assistant.

 ****

They interviewed everyone extensively. Shiro had to reassure multiple nurses and the receptionist that they weren’t going to lose their jobs for this and he would make sure of it. When the receptionist wouldn’t stop crying—“I saw him, I watched him walk out and everything, I’m so, so sorry,”—he’d sent her to Allura for extra reassurance. This wasn’t anyone’s fault; Keith had very carefully and deliberately slipped through the cracks in the system, making sure he wouldn’t be caught before he got to leave.

Shirogane arrived in the midst of this chaos, catching Shiro in a moment of solitude in his office. He was rolling a stress ball in his hand, Keith’s ID bracelet on the desk in front of him, combing his brain for any indication that Keith was planning this and any idea of where he might have gone. Disney World? It didn’t seem like something Keith cared that strongly about. Roswell? That was a possibility—he jotted it down on his notepad. Had he gone looking for his father?

“Takashi,” said Shirogane, standing in the doorway. Shiro set his ball down and stood up to greet his father. He hadn’t actually seen him in years, not since he’d left the hospital after the accident. It was bittersweet, seeing him now. In his face there was still a remnant of the man who’d comforted Shiro when he’d scraped his knees learning to ride a bike, who had ruffled his hair and taken him out for ice cream when he did well on a test, who had loved him so deeply. Part of Shiro saw that old gentleness in the lines of his father’s face and wanted to run to him, to be held and told everything was going to be okay.

He didn’t, because the next words out of his father’s mouth were, “I told you bringing him here was a bad idea.”

“We’re going to find him, Dad.” Shiro felt like knocking something over. “If you’re going to be cruel, show yourself out.”

“I’m not being cruel, I’m being honest,” he said. Shirogane walked in and settled in the chair on the other side of the desk from his son. He folded his hands over his lap as if comfortable, content, innocent.

“For once,” Shiro spat. The sight of his father here now, when he should’ve been here sooner, when he should’ve been here _always_ , boiled Shiro’s blood.  

“What does that mean?” Shirogane asked.

“It means you’re being shifty about this whole thing, Dad! It means that his whole life passed and you never told anyone who Keith’s father was! You never told _me_ ,” Shiro buried his face in his hands, the cool metal of his right calming against his heated skin. “You took your grief and you hoarded it, didn’t let anyone help you and didn’t let anyone in. You shut out the people who loved you and abandoned your children.”

“I never abandoned you.”

“But you abandoned Keith,” said Shiro. “You left him to live alone on Mars, without you, thinking that he had no family in the world. He is my _brother_ , Dad, and I never knew! I never knew this kid that I was talking to and bonding with was my own brother. That Elle, who was always like another mom to me, was actually my stepmother. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t been so skeevy and selfish.”

His father finally looked ashamed of himself. Finally, after so many years.

“If you think so lowly of me, why would you even let me meet him?” Shirogane asked quietly.

“I don’t think lowly of you, I’m just very, very pissed off right now,” said Shiro. “And I wanted you to meet him because there was a chance he doesn’t think of you as someone who left him, there’s a chance you’re still a blank slate to him. And if he doesn’t? If he does hate you a little for what you did? I wanted you to have to be the one to tell him.”

Shirogane took a deep breath and thought to himself for a little while. Shiro sat heavily back down in his chair and resumed squishing his little ball in his hand.

“Why do you think he might’ve stayed if he’d known?” asked his father.

“Because I think he might have gone looking for his family. For you.”

It hurt Shiro to know that Keith had felt alone for so long when his family had been there this whole time. _Shiro_ had been there the whole time. Now, the brother he’d never known about was in the wind, and it was hard not to blame his father.

 ****

After going home for a restless night, the process started all over again. Questioning here, meetings there. Shirogane sat in, silently, and Allura asked more than once if Shiro wanted him removed. She must have sensed that something was amiss between them, though she didn’t know what. Shiro hadn’t told anyone, and neither had Shirogane, as far as he knew.

He said no. Shirogane had a right to be here. He was, after all, Keith’s family.

Shiro was in his office again, trying to distract himself with solitaire while his father sat in one corner and read a book. He kind of wished he’d taken Allura’s offer of having him removed, just because there was so much dreadful silence now that he was alone with Shirogane.

There was a light knock on the open door and Coran’s head poked in. There was a fond but strained smile on his face when he saw Shiro’s father in the chair.

“Pardon the intrusion, Shiroganes,” he said. “But I believe I have some information that can help us find Keith.”

“Okay, we’re listening,” said Shiro, closing his laptop.

“I talked to Miss Holt,” said Coran. His presence was comforting, dispelling some of the tension in the air. He carried a tablet into the room and joined Shiro on his side of the desk to show him the screen.  “She mentioned that she and Keith only spoke a few times and that they played Club Voltron together. I remembered that he was very active on the site and he had friends there, so I pulled up his profile and…this is the boy he became especially close with.”

There weren’t any identifiers on the account other than the boy’s first name in a small bio: Lance. It sounded familiar to Shiro, like Keith had mentioned him before. Before he could ask how this little bit of information could help them, Coran added, “The IP address is from Garrison, Arizona. I’ve asked security to call the bus station, to see if anyone matching Keith’s description bought a ticket headed that way.”

For a second, Katie lingered in the doorway, and Shiro interpreted her wide-eyed stare concern for Keith. He wanted to reach out and reassure her, but she quickly moved on, staring down at her phone and typing frantically.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my spring break is almost over i'm crying but at least I managed at least 3 chapters of fic!  
> Also this chapter was kind of emotionally charged for poor Shiro, but I really liked writing it. Stuff needed to happen and stuff needed to be said.


	12. The Truth

“Whoa. Keith. Keith, my dude, _slow down_.”

After scrolling through his phone in a panic, Keith had stumbled to his feet and was now pacing the length of the basement den. His state of mind was somewhere between intense focus and batshit crazy, judging by the way his brow furrowed, the way he pushed his hands up through his hair in distress, the way he was talking about how _they_ knew where he was and _they_ were coming to get him.

Hunk looked terrified from his perch on the couch, and Lance could see where he was coming from, though he was feeling more worry than anything. Was there more wrong than Lance had realized? He didn’t want to assume that Keith was behaving this way because he was irrationally paranoid or unstable; maybe it was that his relationship with his parents was more toxic than Lance had thought? Neither conclusion was very reassuring.

“Dude,” he said again, standing and intercepting Keith with a hand around his bicep. Keith’s dark eyes met his, wide and frightened. He was like a statue for a moment, frozen mid-thought, before he leaned into Lance’s touch and closed his eyes tightly.

“I’m sorry, I must seem…I didn’t mean to freak you out,” said Keith. “I’m just trying to think of what to do. If I don’t go soon, I’ll have to go back with them, but…I don’t want to leave. I just got here.”

“Who’s looking for you, Keith?”

“It’s nothing too crazy, I swear. I just…wasn’t really supposed to leave? I snuck away when no one was really paying attention and hopped on the first bus out here,” said Keith. Lance noted how he’d avoided answering the actual question Lance had asked. He was also ducking his head to avoid Lance’s gaze, as though he knew his eyes were more truthful than his lips were. For a second, he was a little upset that Keith was lying to him, but the note of fear in Keith’s voice smoothed away his anger.

Lance hovered at Keith’s side, rubbing his shoulder gently and leaning closer to his ear, to whisper words that Hunk wouldn’t be able to hear. He felt the tickle of Keith’s hair at his cheek, heard the tremble of his breath.

“Do you want to talk more privately? So you can tell me the truth?” asked Lance, his tone and volume as soft as he could go. He didn’t want to make Keith feel guilty for avoiding the truth, because the truth could be anything. He wasn’t lying to trick them, he was lying because he was afraid. Lance hoped that Keith felt like he could confide in Lance if it was just the two of them; although he had always trusted Hunk implicitly, he could see that maybe Keith didn’t feel as strongly.

“I told you the truth,” he said weakly, shifting in Lance’s embrace. It was the least convincing denial Lance had heard, and he had watched his brother Marco lie obviously and terribly countless times.

“Nah, you really didn’t, did you?” he said, pulling away just enough so Keith could see the earnest expression on his face. “Hunk, we’re going to have a quick chat in the other room. Everything’s gonna be fine.”

Lance squeezed Keith’s shoulder once before crossing the room to a door at the bottom of the stairs, which led to a storage space where the family kept a mountain of canned food and boxes full of everything they’d ever owned. He put a hand on the doorknob and looked over his shoulder to make sure Keith had followed before turning it and slipping into the darkened room. Keith shuffled in behind him, flinching when Lance pulled the chain dangling from the ceiling and flooding the space with light.

“Okay,” said Lance, sitting down on the floor beside a stack of boxes and patting the spot next to him. Keith hesitated before lowering himself slowly to the ground, distancing himself a little as he played with the bottom hem of his shirt. “Keith, tell me what’s going on. I want to help you.”

“I’m sorry,” said Keith. “I’m sorry I lied, and sorry I came here and barged into your life, and sorry I—”

“Don’t be,” Lance said, cutting him off. “I mean. You can be sorry for lying, but obviously you had a reason. I can’t stay upset if you had a good reason, bud. But you shouldn’t be sorry for being here—you showing up has been the best thing to happen to me all summer.”

“I think you’re speaking too soon,” said Keith. “I have so much shit, Lance. I have all this shit and I brought it with me, when I should have just tried to be on my own, to shoulder it on my own. Instead I came to you, not because I wanted to drag you into all this, but because it was the only thing that made sense.”

“Nobody should have to shoulder it on their own.”

“Lance.” Keith sounded so tired, so worn, and Lance could only reach out. He remembered the park, when his touch had comforted Keith as they curled together in the grass, and again when he’d stepped in to stop Keith from pacing. He hoped that maybe it would help a little now.

Keith let himself be pulled in, relaxing into the embrace, his chin digging sharply into Lance’s shoulder but his breath soft against the back of Lance’s neck.

“Everything you know about me is a lie,” Keith whispered. “But you still want me.”

Lance’s heart was in his throat. Rationally, he knew that Keith meant ‘ _You still want me in your life’_ , but for a moment he’d thought Keith had figured it all out. He thought Keith had seen right into his mind and seen the true nature of his feelings—the feelings that wanted Keith’s hands to hold, his mouth to kiss, his heart to fill with everything Lance had to give. _Fuck_ , this wasn’t the time to think about that, not when Keith needed a friend so badly.

“Tell me the truth, then,” Lance said. “Everything you can.”

So, Keith told him everything.

 ****

Keith had initially felt strange telling Lance the truth. He’d been told his whole life that his story was privileged information for Altea employees with high enough security clearance. But it was liberating, too, to reclaim his very existence from the places it had been hidden. He imagined tearing open manila folders stamped TOP SECRET and scattering their contents around the room. He imagined headlines and radio interviews and the flash of cameras in the face of the company that had kept him locked away.

Although it felt strange for a moment, it wasn’t difficult at all to say, “I was born on Mars.”

Lance had clearly doubted him, but he was careful about expressing it, unwilling to insult Keith by refusing to believe it on principle. He knew who Elle Kogane was, of course; he said that he remembered learning about the expedition in class and going home to devour as much information as he could. It sounded like Lance, all enthusiasm and bubbling ambition.

Keith didn’t have to tell Lance that his mother was dead—that was public knowledge—only that she’d been carrying him over the course of the mission. He had to explain that her Wikipedia page said she was childless and unmarried because Altea had never released an announcement about Keith and had never known about the wedding. When there was still hesitation, Keith offered to show him what he’d found with her personal effects—surely his mother’s wedding DVD would convince Lance, at least because it would’ve been too hard to fake. Lance had gone along with it, retrieving his laptop and Keith’s backpack from the den and watching the screen quietly as Keith showed him the DVD. He even opened Elle Kogane’s Wikipedia page on his phone to be sure it was really her in the footage, and held the photo up to Keith’s face for good measure.

“Okay. I believe you,” Lance had said. “Now, what are you running from?”

Keith talked about the true reasons for his surgery, rehab, and radio silence. He talked about landing on Earth and feeling stuck all over again, and about how he’d fled to Arizona rather than be kept in the med center or sent back to Mars. It felt good to let all of this out, too—his feelings of loneliness and confinement, his frustration with the Altea company even after their kindnesses that saved him, and the need to experience Earth and find the family he’d never really known.

“I can’t let them take me back,” he told Lance. “Not to Altea, not to Mars. I just can’t live that life anymore, not knowing who I am or who I could be. I’m a cover up and a lie and a secret, but I just want to be a _person_.”

Lance nodded, squeezing his shoulder in another calming yet exhilarating touch. The sharpness of his anxiety about the whole situation ebbed when he felt Lance’s fingers, warm through his shirt, but something still buzzed beneath his skin. It was something new and alien.

_Ha_ , Keith thought, feeling the corner of his mouth twitch in an almost-smile, _the only alien thing here is me_.

“I don’t know what to say,” Lance said. “But I think I know what to do. You want this to stay between just you and me, for now?”

“If that’s not too much trouble,” said Keith. “I don’t want you to have to lie.”

“I mean, normally, I wouldn’t lie to my mama. Or Hunk,” said Lance, dropping his hand from Keith’s shoulder and pushing himself to his feet. “But this is a special circumstance. Come on, we’ve got a road trip to pack for.”

“Wait, really?” Keith asked, scrambling up after him. Lance swept up Keith’s bag in one hand and tucked his computer under one arm as he made his way to the door, and Keith stood in the middle of the room, frozen by his surprise.

“Yeah, really,” Lance said, pausing at the door. “You think I was going to let some science bozos take my best friend from me, when I just got you back? Nah, space boy. The whole time you’ve been telling me your story, I’ve been scheming—we’re going to go on classic summer road trip, with a twist. There will be white lies, false trails, and a fugitive from Mars.”

“I’m not a fugitive. It’s not the law that’s looking for me,” Keith said, but Lance had already turned his back and was reemerging into the larger part of the basement, where Hunk was waiting nervously on the couch.

“Remember those theme park vouchers you have?” Lance asked brightly. Hunk nodded. “Well, my man, we’re finally going to have a chance to use them! It will be a win-win—Keith will get to escape his family for a little while longer, we’ll bond on the road, and there’ll be thrills to be had at the end of it all.”

“What’s up with his family?”

“That’s not important,” Lance said, giving Hunk a warning look as he came back to Keith’s side, circling his fingers around his wrist. “Can you switch off the TV? Keith and I have some packing to do, and I’ve gotta tell my mom. We won’t be long, meet us out by your truck so we can head to your house and get your things?”

“Wait, Lance,” said Hunk, but Lance was already pulling Keith up the stairs and laughing. “You mean _today_?”

“Yes, Hunk,” he hollered over his shoulder, already halfway to the landing. “I mean _right now_!”

 ****

Keith felt like he was caught in a whirlwind, watching Lance lay down the framework of his plan. He told his mother and fielded each of her questions flawlessly, promising that he’d keep her updated, that he wouldn’t make Hunk do all the driving, that he’d lather Keith in sunblock. Hunk had the sense not to act too surprised, as though they’d been planning this as a trio instead of Lance coming up with it on his own; he thanked Lance’s mother for letting them go as he headed out the front door to wait in his car.

As soon as Lance’s mother, with some reluctance, agreed to let them go, Lance bounded up the stairs. He patiently waited at the top for Keith, perhaps remembering that only one of them had lived on this planet his entire life, but Keith had adjusted to the gravity and had prepared for this in training. He made it up the stairs at a normal pace, letting himself crack a smirk at the top.

“I’m not an eighty-year-old man, Lance,” he said, “I’m just as spry as you are.”

“ _Spry_ is the kind of word an eighty-year-old man uses,” Lance teased as he continued on down the hallway, which ended in a cracked-open door that Lance leaned into, standing at the threshold of the room as Keith approached. “This is me.”

Lance’s bedroom was situated at the back corner of the house, with two wide that overlooked the yard and overflowed the room with light. Keith’s eyes shuttered automatically, and Lance stumbled over himself to draw the blinds.

“Are you sure you’re not a vampire? This whole being from Mars thing isn’t an elaborate ruse to throw me off your trail?” Lance asked, but Keith was too distracted to properly respond. As his eyes adjusted, he took in everything he could about the space. He looked at each poster on the walls, at the wrinkled and bunched up galaxy pattern of the bedspread, the messy desk beside a neat bookshelf, the basket of folded clothes sitting on the same chair where an already-worn shirt was draped over the back. “Keith.”

“Huh?”

Lance was standing by the dresser, his hand wrapped around the knob of the top drawer. He was watching Keith with a hint of amusement on his face, and Keith felt his face warm. Not only had he been caught in his awed appraisal of Lance’s room, but he’d been so caught up in it that he had missed something Lance had said.

“I asked if you had enough clothes in your bag.”  

“Did you?” Keith asked, then shook his head. “Right, I’m sorry. It should be enough.”

“Don’t be sorry. The bedroom of a teenage boy is disarming at first no matter who you are,” Lance said with a laugh. “Martian or not.”

“It’s different than mine,” Keith said. It was an understatement—as much as his room had felt kind of like a home, it was cold and impersonal compared to Lance’s. Everything about East Texas seemed that way now, especially when held up to the life Lance had here. “All the sleeping quarters were half this size and were pretty much all the same, except for personal belongings. I didn’t have a lot of stuff, just what the scientists gave me and some of my mom’s things.”

Lance’s smile drooped.

“Hey, it wasn’t so bad. I know my cover story made it seem like I was constantly watched and guarded, and like I never got to do anything, but that’s not how it really was,” said Keith, trying his best to lighten the mood of the room. He hadn’t meant to be a downer, had only meant to be honest about the experience he had to compare things to. “I had a childhood. Sure, and I missed out on a lot, but there were a lot of really good things. And I felt lonely, but I wasn’t alone at all. There were tons of people who cared about me. I promise there was life there, it just wasn’t the life I really wanted.”

Lance sighed. “It still makes me sad.”

“Me too,” said Keith.

With a long exhale, Lance seemed to renew his focus and turned to start digging through his things, stacking things up on the bed before retrieving a drawstring duffel with patches up the side from inside the closet. Keith watched his flurry of movement, the wrinkle between his eyebrows as he tried and failed to keep everything folded, and the movement of his lips as he recited the packing list he’d written in his head. As a final touch, stuck his hand between the headboard and the wall and withdrew a narrow box, which he opened to reveal a small stash of cash and gift cards.

“Rainy day fund,” said Lance by way of explanation, collecting everything from the box and sliding it into a sock before throwing it into the bag of his things. “Or, since the goal is clear skies and smooth sailing, I should probably call it a sunny day fund from now on.”

He wrapped up his packing and threw a hat on over his hair, which was long enough that it curled around his ears. Keith's fingers twitched with the impulse to reach out and touch his hair where it peeked out from under the cap he wore. He snapped himself out of it by putting on his backpack and clutching it tightly with both hands. 

“Hey, Lance?” Keith said as they made their way out of his room.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you,” said Keith. “Thank you for everything.”


End file.
